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In the National Gallery

In: English and Literature

Submitted By TheMuhCow
Words 852
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A.
In this short story by Doris Lessing, we meet a young man, an individual from a group of schoolgirls, and most importantly, a man about the age of 60. The narrator, whose name and gender is not given, also plays a part in the story.
The old man is described as well presented, and knows a lot about paintings, or at least George Stubbs’ chestnut horse. The narrator certainly has respect for the old man, and implies that if he spoke louder when telling about the painting, people would mistake him for an official guide. “How much I would have liked to know as much as he did, and to share his passion for Stubbs and the horse”. This shows that the old man is truly sharing his passion with his young acquaintance, who unfortunately does not want to sit through it.
The narrator also has an important role. It is because of him/her we get to hear the old man’s story about his childhood love. However, it is not before he deems the narrator worth it, that he shares his story. “Now he looked properly at me, took me in, decided I was worthy to continue.” This shows that the old man finds the narrator more mature and interesting than the young man.
One of the biggest themes is the different stages in life. When the old man was in love with a 16-year-old girl, just like the one who sleeps near him in the story, he was only 12, and it meant that they were in completely different stages of their lives. The age gap was too big, just like it is in the story, now that the man is 60 years old. The young man is also in a different stage. He becomes impatient when listening to an old man telling about an old panting, and even says, “You can’t make a silk purse out of me”. This could mean that if the old man really is the young man’s mentor or teacher, as the narrator describes their relationship, then hearing about an old painting is not something the young man thinks will help him progress. That, just like the saying, with the poor material the old man gives him he will not develop well.

Text 4, the extract from “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, gives an interesting contribution in correlation to “In the National Gallery”. It distinguishes between how men and women remember. Just like the old man in the story, it tells us how men hang on to their wishes and dreams forever. “his dreams mocked to death by Time”. This shows very well how the old man feels. He is still burdened by his memories of that very summer, and even defends it by saying “The passions of little kids are just as strong as the grown-ups”. However, the last part of text 4 does not contribute with much. We are not in any way told how women think of their past dreams and wishes, but we can only imagine that the 16-year-old the old man was in love with, will have forgotten him by now and does not dwell on it nearly as much as he does.
Both pictures 1 and 2 are relevant for our story. The first picture in a more literal sense since it is the horse painted by George Stubbs. It gives us an insight in how the different audiences perceive it. Where the young man and the group of schoolgirls just take a quick glance at it and discard it before truly looking into it. The old man, and partially the narrator, looks beyond that and enjoys a “simple” painting of a horse.
The second picture, “The Onlooker”, is a lot like the narrator. First, he/she passively watches and listens as the two men talk about the painting. Then the narrator mostly listens during the conversation with the old man, only coming with few short answers and comments, and also remains passive when the girls walk out laughing and the old man stands up to defend his precious painting.

B.
The narrator’s point of view works excellent in the story. Even though we are not given direct insight in all the different people’s thoughts and feelings, the narrating person easily observes them. Because the narrator takes the form of a person in the story, we gain knowledge of the old man’s feelings and memories without him having to share them with a third party. This gives a feeling of confidentiality and increases the trust we have in the narrator. We are not told much about the narrator though, and how he/she feels about the old man’s story. It is more of an empty shell than a person. It is just eyes and ears without much more to concentrate on. This should also give us an unbiased view of the conflict that almost erupted between the noisy girls and the old man, but with the old man opening up to the narrator, the reader is more likely to sympathize with him.

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...moma.org/ National Gallery of Art: http://www.nga.gov/ Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: http://www.mfa.org/ The Phillips Collection: http://www.phillipscollection.org/ The Art Institute of Chicago: http://www.artic.edu/aic/index.php Whitney Museum of American Art: http://www.whitney.org/ Guggenheim Museum New York: http://www.guggenheim.org/new_york_index.shtml Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery: http://americanart.si.edu/index3.cfm Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: http://hirshhorn.si.edu/ Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African Art: http://www.nmafa.si.edu/voice.html Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery: http://www.asia.si.edu/ The National Portrait Gallery: http://www.npg.si.edu/ Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum: http://cooperhewitt.org/ National Museum of the American Indian: http://www.nmai.si.edu/ The Getty: http://www.getty.edu/ San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: http://www.sfmoma.org/ National Hispanic Cultural Center: http://www.nationalhispaniccenter.org/index.php American Visionary Art Museum: http://www.avam.org/ American Folk Art Museum: http://www.folkartmuseum.org/default.asp?id=886 National Museum of Mexican Art: http://www.nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org/ Global Museums The British Museum: http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/ Victorian and Albert Museum: http://www.vam.ac.uk/ Tate: http://www.tate.org.uk/ National Portrait Gallery:...

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