Unit 3 Bereavement and Grief
Preparatory Work
(1) According to Britannica, Luigi Pirandello was winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize for Literature. With his invention of the “theatre within the theatre” in the play Seipersonaggi in cercad’autore (1921; 工程造价Six Characters in Search of an Author), he became an important innovator in modern drama. Influenced by his catastrophic personal experiences, he developed a literary style characterized by “the exploration of the tightly clod world of the forever changeable human personality” (Britannica). “War” reflects this style of psychological realism, for instead of depicting external circumstances of the Great War, it choos to underline the cruelty of war from the perspective of the soldiers’ anxious, grieving parents.
(2) The story was t in a train carriage at dawn. The war referred to in the story is most probably World War I, for during this war the author himlf was a psychologically tormented father, both of who sons were captured as prisoners of war. The World War I w
dmadas an international conflict that resulted from clashes of interest among the world’s economic great powers asmbled in two opposing alliances, the Allies (including the United Kingdom/British Empire, France and the Russian Empire) versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance alongside Germany and Austria-Hungary, though it did not join the Central Powers (Willmott 15). It is generally believed by historians that World War I was “virtually unprecedented in the slaughter, carnage, and destruction it caud” (Britannica). It led to the fall of four great imperial dynasties (Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey), resulted in the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and, in its destabilization of European society, laid the groundwork for World War II.
(3) Common symptoms of grief caud by bereavement include wistfulness, lethargy, hysteria, depression and so forth. According to the psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, people who have lost someone clo usually go through five emotional stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
(4) Luigi /luˈidʒi/
Perandello/ˌpɪrənˈdɛloʊ; Italian ˌpi rɑnˈdɛllɔ/
Fabriano/Italian ˌfabriˈaˌno/
Sulmona /Italian sulˈmona/
Critical Reading
I. Understanding the text
1.
(1) Their argument was about what attitude parents should take towards their children going to war and killed in action. Of the pasngers, the fat man appeared to have the strongest argument, who suggested that parents should withhold their own grief and feel proud and happy about their children who laid down their lives for the Country.
(2) In Paragraphs 15 and 16, he is described as a “fat, red-faced man with blood-shot eyes of the palest gray”, who was “panting”, and “from [who] bulging eyes emed to sxa
purt inner violence of an uncontrolled vitality which his weakened body could hardly contain”. In Paragraph 17, it is revealed that his two front teeth are missing. His eyes are once again mentioned in Paragraph 29, described to be “bulging, horribly watery light grey”.
The physical traits might suggest that the fat man was in poor health, and was grief-stricken by his son’s death.
范玮琪和黑人婚纱照(3) The woman asked the question of the fat man becau she was awed by his stoic respon to his son’s death. She found it extremely difficult to cope with her anxiety over her son’s departure for the front, and wished to confirm the fat man’s feelings so that she might derive some strength from his example. She was the one who asked the question, rather than one of the other pasngers, becau she,as a focalized character who inner consciousness was explored at great length, was trying to emphasize with the fat man. The fat man reacted strongly to this question, stupefied, brought into painful awareness of his son’s death, and reduced to uncontrollable sobs. This reaction indicates
that the fat man, instead of calmly accepting the fact of his son’s death as he claimed, had been desperately rejecting this horrible idea.
2.
(1) F(2) F(3) T(4) T
3.bsb
(1) D(2) A(3) A
barberaII. Critiquing the Text
政治红宝书
(1) Instead of giving direct description of war action, the story depicts the emotional turmoil on the part of the soldiers’ parents. The author intends to nd a message about the cruelty of war, by showing that war impos great suffering in more ways than one, not only on the soldiers who go to the battlefield, but also on their parents who are extremely worried about their safety and may have to endure the pain of loss.
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(2) The fat, red-faced man started his part of the argument by putting a stop to the other pasngers’ debate over the correlation between the intensity of the parents’ anxiety and the number of children they have on the battlefield. He insisted that parents gave life to their children not for their own benefit, and that they should respect their children’s wish to go to the front. He ended his argument by claiming that parents should accept their children’s death on the battlefield without grief, showing that he himlf cho not to wear mourning for his son.success是什么意思
His argument is inconsistent, for at first he mentions all the glamour of youthful life, including “girls, cigarettes, illusions, new ties”, but then he talks about dying “young and happy”, “without having the ugly sides of life, the boredom of it, the pettiness, the bitterness of disillusion”. The latter statement overlooks the good sides of life mentioned in the former one. His argument is also somewhat illogical, becau the awareness that children do not belong to their parents does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that parents should not grieve over their children’s death. Therefore, the reason he gave for not grieving was unconvincing. His pau and hesitation in the middle of the ntence “O
ur sons are born becau…well, becau they must be born” might be en as a revelation of his checked impul to articulate his paternal affection. It is as if he were to blurt out “Our sons are born becau we love them”. He refrained from saying something like this probably for fear that he could not check his emotion once letting it out.
