Tuesday, March 31, 2015

An  Upside Down Day

In Roald Dahl's short story "Man from the South" a man in a pool tries to have just a "little evening sun" when a man came and put his day upside down. While sitting down, our narrator sees a man walking besides the pool that asks him if he could sit down near him. The man had a southern accent, and a really crazy idea. Two young adults sat on the table near by, the boy offered the two men cigars, the southern man didn't take it, instead he grabbed one of his, the other one did accepted the kind mans cigar. While the boy lighted his cigar he made a comment that would've changed his life, he told the 2 men sitting nearby thet his lighter never fails. The southern man made a bet, if the boy could light his lighter 10 times without missing one, he would get a Cadillac. But if he missed even once, he would lose something little, that he never uses, perhaps, the little finger of his hand. Later on they went upstairs to the mans room to complete the bet. The boys hands were tied up with strings and the southern man had a chopping knife right up his finger. When the bet was almost to an end a women entered to the room, when she saw what the man was about to do she yelled "Carlos, Carlos!" and the bet was put to an end, yet the man had nothing else to bet, because his wife took it all at a little cost. 


Dahl uses characterization and imagery to put more depth into the story, one example of characterization is:  
        "Oh, no! Dat would be no good. And you might be tempted to refuse to hold it out. What I should do I should tie one of your hands to de table before we started and I should stand dere with a knife ready to go chop de momint your lighter missed."
This example shows how the author uses words as "momint" that when read can show an accent an can personalize the character. Carlos, is a man that comes probably from southern america so the author personalizes him with misspelled words. 

Imagery is what our 5 sences can see, smell, touch, listen or taste, on the book "Man from the South" at the veryu begining theres an example I like a lot. 
"It was a fine garden with lawns and beds of azaleas and tall coconut palms, and the wind was blowing strongly through the tops of the palm trees making the leaves hiss and crackle as though they were on fire. I could see the clusters of big brown nuts handing down underneath the leaves."
Resultado de imagen para jamaica
This shows how the setting of the book looks like and helps the reader understand better the setting. In my opinion, what makes Roahl Dahl´s stories so good are this two effects he uses, yet they put more suspense to the story and becomes more suspensfull



No comments:

Post a Comment