Анализ рассказа "Who am I this time?" К. Воннегута.

UEI HPE OMSK INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT AND FOREIGH LANGUAGES ‘IN.YAZ - OMSK’

ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT

Kurt Vonnegut

‘Who am I this time?’

By Kudasheva T.S.

Omsk 2012

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle (1963), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and Breakfast of Champions (1973) blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. As a citizen he was a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union and a critical liberal intellectual. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.

Who am I this time? is a short story of 14 pages. It was published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1961. The story was collected in Vonnegut's famous anthology Welcome To The Monkey House.

The centre of the action is an amateur theater, The North Crawford Mask and Wig club, with one worthy actor, Harry Nash. He is common self-contained clerk, but he transforms completely into another person while he is acting. Soon Helene Shaw, a recent addition to the town, falls in love with Nash - but with his character in the play.

I reckon the title suggests some kind of reincarnation whether it afterlife or different guise of the same life. It’s beyond doubt that the title is appropriate.

First some remarks on themes. The work has several themes which are rather stated, then implied. Loneliness and life meaning are they. It is possible to say the work generalizes life as a constant change. The whole life of the main characters most heavily contributes to the formulation of the theme. There is no need to mention that the given themes emerge organically and naturally. It is my belief that the work's themes are topical or universal in its application. At any time a person suffers from desolation and strives for the meaning of life.

The point of narration is 1st point of view. The point of view is consistent throughout the work. I’m indebted to mention as far as the point of view is given to the author (and he is a director of the theatre) we may conclude that it is reliable and we may trust his judgments. Given the author’s purposes the chosen point of view is an appropriate and effective one. I do not really think if another point of view takes place, the work would much differ. Despite the author doesn’t demonstrate his feelings towards characters, it is obvious he sympathizes with the characters. There is no any change in the point of view in order not to disorient the reader.

The conflict of the story on which the plot turns is Helene’s falling in love with Harry who is not a jelly roll by a long stretch of the imagination. I find the plot is absorbing since Harry is seemed as not a person, but fictional character of plays he acts out. The conflict is external. Exposition is theater’s vote to do Tennessee’s The Streetcar Named Desire. Complication is the author’s invitation for Helene to take part in the play, her falling in love with Harry. The climax is Helene’s present for Harry and his Damascus road. Falling action is Helena and Nash first readings and then - Denouement – their marriage. The plot’s development is strictly chronological without any flashbacks and foreshadowing. There is no denying comparing the title and Harry’s eternal phrase ‘Who am I this time?’ with the last line of the story ‘Who are we this time?’ that essential change takes place. Now Harry is not alone in his transfigurations, now he acquired a right partner. The plot is unified, its episodes logically relate to one another. The greatest emphasis was given to episodes of Helene’s awareness of her chillness toward men and, globally, life – her tears and metaphor of bottled up creature. The end is clear-out – they are together now and all sorrows and joys they will share with each others. But at the same time in spite of such benevolent end, a down-earth man think of the future – how for instance Harry will act when he doesn’t’ read a script? Or what will be if all novels and plays will end and Helene would have nothing to shove to his husband. The ice of the heart of Helene is melted, but will she be able to metamorphose clerk into passionate lover? Anyway the end leaves room for suggestion… It would be interesting to read the sequel to a novel… Nevertheless the story ends on the buoyant note.

The protagonist of the work is Harry Nash and the antagonist is Helene Shaw. The former is excellent actor, but in real life – dull clerk who do nothing with except for work and theater. The latter is a beautiful girl from a telephone company, who every 2 months goes from town to town in the call of duty and has never been in love. Despite their flaws these characters are round and during complications – dynamic (There appear to be like this as long as they met each other). To establish and reveal the characters the author employs both direct and indirect method of characterization. In the course of the work the characters change as a result of their experience – Helene begins to feel the pulse of life, as for Harry he stayed the same, I reckon. Finally the characters of the work are credible and interesting.

The author's language is concrete and literal with slight inclination to figurative diction. The choice of words is limited by neutral vocabulary and some colloquialisms.

The author uses:

a)      patterns of rhyme and sound (the changed type (italics), clipping). Such patterns draw the attention of the reader towards highlighted item.

b)      figurative devices ( lexical SD: metaphor, metonymy, zeugma, personification, epithet, irony, allusion, interjections; lexico-syntactical SD: simile, antithesis). Figurative devices create bright images, adds the portraits of the characters, reveals nature of different subjects, irony as well as colloquialisms and slangisms create specific atmosphere of ease among the director and theater participants.

c)      syntactical SD (repetition – anaphora; parallelism, inversion, reduplication, detached constructions, gradation, repetition, tautology). Syntactical SD generates rhythm which increase or slow down the action of the story.

The sentences predominantly are short and simple. The author's tone is sympathetic (I wanted him in my play, he said what he always said to anybody who asked him to be in a play—and it was kind of sad, if you think about it) and ironic (I don't think a volcano could have stirred her up enough to say, "Oo.). The style of the author is appropriate to the work’s subject and theme so far as it devoid high-flown diction. To make it more clear such simple style is convenient for rendering of simple verities. 

I reckon the interpretation of the main idea do goes beyond the surface. Two withdrawn persons live without any interest towards life which goes on full speed ahead. I believe it can be easily applied to any of us. From time to time into mind of common human thoughts of world’s caducity extravagate and when he realizes the futility of his own life as well. This goes to show Harry Nash is a typical hero of our time, because his amateur theater is life, globally, world, and he - is any of us. Every man tries on masks, some become to him and he accustoms to them, some are not and he throws them away. Everybody see what they want to see. Many become the victims of that tragic theory. They say it’s pity to be what people want you to be. And the whole our life with such serious social issues as terrorism and globalization is no more than amateur theater. Yes, it certainly must be an amateur one. Indeed who with 1st tryout managed to chose right mask for cottonwool existence? We shuffle on pompous mask of pride and self-containment, but besides it screws up its eyes the tremulous mask-essence – it is our limitless overwhelming horror before the Great Stillness and Desolation. The faint apparition of those two twins follows us from the birth towards the very end of life. Play your role until your mask will go cracks and lay open the truth.

What is important is understanding of life meaning. And it turns out that love in every its aspect is a key.

That brings me to the end of my criticism.

Making a conclusion I must say every piece of K.V.’s art is filled with life. Life that is not sophisticated substance, but realistic one. Be that as it may.

The list of SD used in Who am I this time?

Allusion

Tennessee Wil­liams' A Streetcar Named Desire

Marlon Brando

Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial

Abe Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois

the young architect in The Moon is Blue

Henry the Eighth in Anne of the Thousand Days

Doc in Come Buck Little Sheba

Ben Hur

Faust

Othello

Paris 

Inversion

the only real actor the club has

Epithet

beautiful girl

dinky little red tie

huge and handsome and conceited and cruel

a drunk and faded Southern belle.

really good-looking, really young girl

the beat-up forty -year-old women

a very passionate girl

puppy love

craze dreams

Metaphor

Sexy gorilla

Harry put down the playbook, put on his coat and tie, and turned into the pale hardware-store clerk again.

…not one woman with dew still on her.

I'm a walking icebox…

He put his hands in his pockets, and he hunched over, and he looked her up and down, gave her looks that left her naked.

Those eyes burned up clothes faster than she could put them on.

She'd turned the color of cran­berry juice.

I had no idea you had that mush fire in you, dear…(Skyrockets! Pinwheels! Roman candles!)

The girl was drained.

Harry was just evaporates into thin air

…and we murdered those audiences.

Simile

And then, while Doris and I were getting over our emo­tional experiences, like people coming out from under ether, Harry put down the playbook…

…I feel as though I were in some kind of big bottle…

It sounded like a deep-sea diver coming upstairs in his lead shoes.

…he rolled his shoulders like a prizefighter warming up.

When the scene was over, Helene Shaw was as hot as a hod carrier, as limp as an eel.

Parallelism

She didn't seem very interested in that subject, and I wondered if she was interested in anything.

…what Harry   really   is."   She   corrected   herself.   "What   Harry really isn't…

I said I thought so, and I told her most of the women in town thought so too.

Tautology

the machine didn't have all the bugs out of it yet. It made mistakes.

Reduplication

…a bill I'd gotten for a call to Honolulu, I'd never called Honolulu in my life.

… almost a machine herself, an automatic phone-company politeness machine.

Stella was the wife of the Marlon Brando character, the wife of the character I wanted Harry Nash to play.

Detachment construction

She told me she had been going from town to town like that for two years, always a stranger.

Harry, body and soul, was exactly what the script and the director told him to be.

"O.K., baby," Harry said to Helene, his eyelids droop­ing.

Clipping

‘em

Anaphora

She said her name was Helene Shaw. She said she might just surprise me — and herself. She said she just might come.

Verne owns Miller's Hardware Store. Verne was Harry's boss.

Gradation

Skyrockets! Pinwheels! Roman candles!

Things were going so well, so hot and heavy, so early in the game that I had to say to Harry and Helene…

He was tongue-tied, he was scared, he was shy – he was everything Harry was famous for being between plays.

Zeugma

Harry, body and soul, was exactly what the script and the director told him to be.

Repetition

For Harry's pleasure, and our pleasure, too, we had him read…

… she was the same girl with the same smile…

… who loved a gorilla because she needed a gorilla.

"O.K., O.K.," said Harry, warming up, warming up.

Irony

I don't think a volcano could have stirred her up enough to say, "Oo."

Mother Nature at her worst…

Interjection

Um

Uh huh

Mf

Huh?

Slang (and colloquialisms)

Palm off

Sour apples

He just might make her bubble…

I sock her…

You said a mouthful!

To be through with

Gaga look

the nut house