Analysis
The text I am going to comment on is a story by William Somerset Maugham. He was a prominent English writer, and he is best known by his short stories. When Maugham described people and places in his stories, he did it mostly from his personal experience.
The text under consideration is an individual story «A friend in need». The plot of the story is concerned with situation when Burton the Young was down and out, and he asked Burton the Elder to give him a job. The action takes place in one English office, where Burton the Elder was a prosperous businessman. Such is the plot of the extract.
The story is first person narration. The main idea reveals that every person does his own fade. The author lays particular stress on the fact that everybody must achieve good life. The opening paragraph presents appearance of one of the main heroes in this story. All the details of his appearance speak of Burton the Young’s temperament and style of life.
In this story we can observe the conventional sequence of compositional elements: an exposition, a gradual mounting of tension with final climax, denouement. Exposition presents the time, the place of the action and the circumstances which influence on the action as « he came to see in my office one day and asked me for a job». We found gradation as « he didn’t move. He went rather pale. He hesitated for a moment. He was down and out. If he couldn’t get something to do he would have to commit suicide». And repetition presents in words with negative meaning as «he didn’t move, he couldn’t pay, he couldn’t get». Climax is at the end of the story as « done,-he said», it is the highest, the most dramatic point of the action that have the event of greatest interest and intensity. After climax we found denouement as « we shook hands. I wished him good luck and he left me. I had a lot of work to do that morning and I only just managed to get to the creek at Tarumi at half past twelve. But I needn’t have hurried; he never turned up». Everything is made clear after these words.
There are some compositional elements of the abstract, for example narration, description, explanation, dialogues. When we speak about narration, we really found orderly account of events that followed one another, as «we shook hands. I wished him good luck and he left me», so these are dynamic of things that are shown as happening one after another in their sequence. The description brings out the characteristic features of Burton the Young personality such as his appearance as «he was always well-dressed and smart-looking. He was handsome in a way, with curly hair and pink-and-white cheeks». We found explanation in Burton the Elder words: « if he couldn’t get something to do he’d have to commit suicide».
There is no monologues, but there are a lot of dialogues that reproduced the speech of the characters : « well, isn’t there anything you can do except play cards: «I can swim! Swim! I swam for my university». Here we can see very short sentences and phrases, so laconic phrases and simple constructions make the story more dynamic.
The lexical peculiarities of the passage depended on the choice of words. According to the situation we may found neutral, colloquial and bookish type of the words. Such as colloquial (done, chap, fellow), bookish (hitherto, quarter, credit, constitution), neutral (say, take, swim, women). The use of colloquial English helps to make the story vivid and life like.
The lexical-stylistic peculiarities of the passage is also present in the story. Such as metaphor : « he rubbed his chin with his hand» - it mean that he think; synonyms : « money, penny, credit», comparison : « women thought a lot of him» and « the girls wouldn’t have thought so much of him if they had seen him then», key-words such as swim : « I can swim», « swim», « I swam for my university», « I was a pretty good swimmer» and job : « he asked me for a job», « if he would do it I would give him a job», « offer of job». The usage of key-words deserves special attention of author to Burton the Young because he need job and he could only swim except card playing. There are a lot of toponims as Shioya Club, Tarumi, it means that author directs on truthful backgrounds of the events.
The syntactic peculiarities are expressed by short type of sentences. There are a lot of interrogative and declarative sentence . this means that Burton the Elder and Burton the Young decided the follow way in Burton’s the Young as « How old are you? », «thirty-five», «and what have you been doing hitherto? », «well, nothing very much», «come back and see me in another 35 years».
The syntactic-stylistic peculiarities are expressed by circle structure: at the beginning of the text Burton the Elder gave a kindly little chuckle and at the end of story he gave a little mild chuckle. This construction helps to bring out Burton’s the Elder real face – evil inside, angel outside. And Burton the Elder didn’t confess his guilt. We also found dialogue without words as: « I didn’t say anything, I shrugged my shoulders, he looked at me for a moment and then he nodded». The author clearly displays invisible connection between main heroes.
The liter and psychological peculiarities are expressed by the names of the main heroes. Even the names contribute to the general tenor of the story. Burton the Elder was a prosperous businessman and Burton the Young is the poor card-player. They are both card-players but Burton the Elder went upwards and Burton the Young went downwards because they played with their fade, but only Burton the Elder hope himself and Burton the Young hope on God. To be illustrative of their lives that Burton the Elder plays with people’s lives – he is lucky and Burton the Young plays with his own life – he is loser and he knew perfectly well what he was after. So we found explicitly of facts about Burton the Young and implicitly of facts about Burton the Elder. One more detail here is that Burton the Young couldn’t manage the creek of Tarumi, so he couldn’t manage the point of his life.
Also speech characterization presents in the story. Such as « come back and see me in another 35 years and I’ll see what I can do». This is words of Burton the Elder. This phrase is full of mockery. Burton the Elder want to teach Burton the Young the good lesson.
The story contains a great deal of what was typical at the time the writer lived in, the burning issues of his day and at the same time it deals with the problems nowadays. So it gives the reader food for thoughts make him analyze situations taken from everyday life that every person makes his own fade and every person must hope only on himself. That is why author uses antithesis in the headline of story by a statement « a friend in need is the friend indeed».