Leesverslagen Engels

Op sommige scholen moet men ook de zogenaamde READING FILES maken. Dat zijn samenvattingen van fragmenten uit boeken of korte verhalen. Ook gedichten en songteksten vallen onder die categorie.
Haal ze hier.

Henry James;

The turn of the screw; Theme: the belief that children can be possessed by evil and should not be seen as paragons of innocence, James shows the corruption of innocence in human beings.

Vertelsituatie; the story is told by the governess, we see the things trough her eyes; she feels lost and alone in her quest for the truth.

Form; the turn of the screw is a short story with dramatic concentration. The story is a story in a story.

Background: with a friend in a Archbishop were he heard of an occurence, which gave him the idea.

Quint: a rival of james in the theater was model for Peter Quint.

The governess: could be James’ sister Alice, who suffered by mental illness; or might be based on a governess in one of Freuds story’s . The governess had a corruptive influence on the children, based on the hallucinations .

The faith: the christian faith plays an important role, the governess sees the church as a place to refuge.

There are also some autobiographical elements.

Jerzy Kosinski;

Being There: Titel and Theme: Chance is not in any document, he does not exist oficially, so cannot ‘be’. But he succeeds in obtaining an powerful position in a few days, he suddenly ‘is’. He does not anything active, he’s just there.

Genre: Being There is a short satirical novel. The American power, politicans, businessmen are made ridiculous by a simple man.

Setting: the story is taking place in New York (an indication by the United Nations building). The story takes less than a week at the end of 1960.

Susan Hill;

I’m the king of the castle; Main characters:

Hooper; a hard,selfish,terribly cruel kid. He terrorizes Kingshaw so heavy that he will drown himself.

Kingshaw; a lonely, sensitive boy who feels that there is no place for hin at the house, he feels home only at school. He cannot stand up for himself.

Mr Hooper; a lonely, sexually frustrated man who feels born again with ms. Kingshaw at the house.

Ms Kingshaw; a lonely woman who tries to find security by her relationship with mr Hooper. They gonna get married.

Setting: the house ‘Warings’, a gloomy old house at the edge of the town of Derne.

Theme:

- the evil will come to surface under certain circumstances, and as a reult of harm is done.

- the lack of communication between parents and there children.

Title: ‘I’m the king of the castle’ calls Kingshaw. This is one of the spare moments Kingshaw feels superior to Hooper. But Hooper defends his castle Warings against anyone.

D.H. Lawrence;

The Virgin and the Gipsy; Genre and theme: V & G is a psychological novelette and has two themes.

1. Concers the emotional dominance of one person over another (grandmother)

2. The contrast between the life of the mind. The mechanical, intellectual Western approuach to life ïð the life of the ‘blood’, a natural, instinctive, unrestrained way of life. The life of ‘blood’ becomes apparent when the flood destroys the house and Yvette is saved by the gipsy.

Setting: Papplewick in the north of England, in the 1920s.

Alan Silletoe;

The loneliness of the long-distance runner

Title: Smith (main character) is in a Borstal school, before a robbery of a baker. He’s made a lond-distance runner. He likes that because he enjoys being alone and think and to make decisions.

Genre and theme; L-D could be called a working-class story. It shows the mind of a young boy. One of the things that occupy his mind is the fight between ‘them’ and ‘us’.

Setting: the borstal is an institute where young criminals are reformed trough training and education. Essex, Gunthorpe, Hucknall and Aylesham are four Borstals mentioned in the story; in the late 1940s.

John Steinbeck;

Of mice and men

Title: The titel of a story is derived from a poem by the Scottish poet Robert Burns, called a mouse. The moral of that poem is that, whatever plans people may devise, they often fail. I of mice and man, George and Lennie have a dream which almost succeeds but fails in the end.

Genre: Of mice and men is a novelette about very close but illfated friendship. People are described from the outside. You see how the act, not how they think.

Theme; George and Lennie are close friends and their friendship makes them different from the other farmworkers.

Setting: The story is set in California during the Great Depression and takes up three days.

F. Scott Fitzgerald;

The Great Gatsby; Title and theme; Gatsby is the tragic hero of the novel. His greatness lies in his dreamworld and in his faith in the outer appearances. He cannot make the difference between dream and reality. The girl he onced loved is still his ideal and he thinks that he can win her back, because he become rich. He does not realize that dreams and the reality are worlds apart and it is naïveté that causes his tragic death.

Genre: the great Gatsby can be called a novel of a character, because certain elements in Gatsby’s character lead to his downfall: a powerful imagination, a too romantic longing for the past, an obsession with being rich.

Setting: a few years after WO I in the east of the USA.

The main characters all belong to the wealthier classes (not the owner of the garage)

Ernest Hemingway;

The old man and the sea; Genre: The old man and the sea is a novelette (shorter than a novel,longer than a short story)

Theme: The relation between man and nature. Nature is symbolized by the Marlin. First he want to catch the Marlin for money, than he begins to admire it for its great strength and intelligence, then he becomes to love it and feels sorry for killing it.

The story does not and sad, because he won respect.

Setting: the old man lives on Cuba and fishes in the Gulf of Mexico. These things are not important in the story, names also. They are more important as humanity than as individuals.

Irla Levin;

The boys from Brazil; Background: is the real project by Nazi criminals, about Hitler replica’s who have to control the world about a several years.

Genre: the use of the background is part of the attempt to create a synthesis of the factual reporting of the ‘documentary novel’ and the imaginative writing of the traditional ‘fictional’ novel.

The book is an attempt to create an alternative history, using real persons, events and situations.

Doctor Mengele’s biological invention adds the element of science fiction to the book, but there is a close tie with the fact, because ‘mononuclear reproduction’ is already possible in biology.

Vertelsituatie: the novelist uses all the conventions of traditional realism.

Theme: Levin describes a diabolical plot laid by a Nazi scientist, Mengele, to produce a number of Hitler-replicas. The struggle between him and Liebermann gives a question: is man naturally inclined to evil and should this be supressed by force? Or should we try to maintain our integrity, dignity and charity? This is the main theme of the book. At the end a Hitler boy plays and Liebermann notice the possibles consequences of the judgement he may have formed.

Characterisation: Liebermann is the exact opposite of the glamoros superhero of spy fiction. Middle aged man who fight against the Nazi’s.

John Fowles;

The Collector; Genre: The collector can be called a psychological thriller. A psychopath kidnaps the girl he’s in love with and keeps her imprisoned until she dies. Then he makes preparations for the next kidnapping.

Title and theme: Frederick Clegg collects butterflies and he becomes a collector of girls.

The main theme deals with the difference in nature between the collcector and the free human spirit. It becomes clear that Frederick is also a prisoner of his collection, as the girl Miranda is his prisoner, and in that spitit he’s just ad dead as a butterfly in his collection. Miranda calls collectors anti-life; the are people who kill for no reason.

Setting: in Lewes, Sussex and takes p about 2 months

Point of view: First the story is told by Frederick, and we get a picture of a madman. Second we read the diary of Miranda, so we read the same events but of a different viewpoint.

William Shakespeare;

MacBeth; Theme: the conflict between order and chaos. This conflict is associated with the opposition between reason and passion. At first reading we migt be inclined to see the play as a tragedy of ambition, Manbeth becoming the victim of his limitless lust of power. The play appears to have deaper meanings. The evil is not confined to Macbeth but it is also felt in the terrible atmosphere of the blood-stained setting, the terror of cicil war and tyranny and the lack of faith that we meet al throuhg the play.

At the and of the story there is no evil anymore, Scotland has become peacefull. The evil has worked itself out, which is symbolized by the Macbeths childness.

Characters: The interest is focused on Macbeth and his evil genius, his wife. Shakespeare shows us a loving husband and honourable leader, being morally destroyed. His wife is one oorzaak the other are the wiches with there mysterious power. At the end of the story the strong soldier in him is reborn. Lady Macbeth was first the evil genius but when the chaos is heavy she gets a guilty feeling about what happend.

Plot: the plot moves at great speed. The central incident, the murder of King Duncan, is the first of the three murders by Macbeth. The motives for the murders are: being ambition, fear (murder Banquo), mere spite (Lady Macduff and her children). The solution is provided by the death of Macbeth.

Source: the play is based on the chronicle of Scottish History written by Raphael Holinshed. Shapespeare derived his Material from Holinshed.

Paul van Weerdenburg.
Copyright © 1999. All rights reserved.
Revised: juni 18, 1999.