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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;
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 closed world of the forever changeable
human personality” (Britannica).
“War”
reflects
t
his
style
of
psychological
realism,
for
instead
of
depicting
external
circumstances of the Great War, it
chooses to underline the cruelty of war from the
perspective of the soldiers’ anxious,
grieving parents.
(2) The story was set 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
himself
was
a
psychologically tormented father, both
of whose sons were captured as prisoners of
war.
The
World
War
I
was
an
international
conflict
that
resulted
from
clashes
of
interest
among
the
world’s
economic
great
powers
assembled
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
dest
ruction
it
caused”
(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 caused by bereavement include wistfulness,
lethargy,
hysteria,
depression
and
so
forth.
According
to
the
psychologist
Elisabeth
Kü
bler-
Ross,
people who have lost someone close usually go
through five emotional stages:
denial,
anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
(4) Luigi
/lu?id?
i/
Perande
llo
/?p?
r
?n?d?
lo
?; Italian ?pi r
ɑ
p>
n?d?
ll
?
/
Fabriano/Italian
?
fabri
?
a
?
< br>no/
Sulmona /Italian
sul
?
mona/
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 passengers, 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.
Unit 3 Bereavement and Grief
(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
[whose]
bulging
eyes
seemed
to
spurt
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”.
These physical traits might suggest
that the fat man was in poor health, and was
grief-
stricken by his son’s
death.
(3) The
woman asked the question of the fat man because
she was awed by his stoic
response
to
his
son’s
death.
She
found
it
extr
emely
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 passengers,
because she,as a
focalized character
whose 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.
(1) D(2) A(3)
A
II. Critiquing the Text
(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 send a
message
about
the
cruelty
of
war,
by
showing
that
war
imposes
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.
(2) The fat,
red-faced man
started his
part of the argument by
putting
a stop
to
the
other passengers’ 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 himself chose not to
wear mourning for his son.
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
bit
terness
of
disillusion”.
The
latter
statement
overlooks
the
good
sides of
life mentioned in the former one. His argument is
also somewhat illogical,
because
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
pause
and
hesitation
in
the
middle
of
the
sentence
“Our
sons
are
born
because…well, because they must be
born” might be see
n as a revelation of
his
checked impulse to articulate his
paternal affection. It is as if he were to blurt
out
“Our sons are born because we love
them”. He refrained from saying something
like this probably for fear that he
could not check his emotion once letting it out.
(3) When he mentioned
“girls, cigarettes, illusions, new ties”, he was
referring to the
elements
of
youthful
life
that
were
more
alluring
to
young
people
than
their
parents’ affection. He was trying to
say that young people had so much
to
enjoy
that their lives would never be
centered around their parents. His thoughts about
being
young
can
barely
support
his
subsequent
view
that
there
should
be
no
mourning for someone who died young and
happy. On the contrary, the fact that
young people have many good things in
store for them makes their death all the
more lamentable.
(4)
The
fat
man’s
feeling
for
the
“Country”
was
more
likely
to
be
a
cliché
conveniently used to advance his
argument, for he used the “if” clause instead of
stating
it
as
a
matter
of
course.
This
indicates
his
awareness
that
the
Country
being
a natural necessity is merely a popular notion.
However, there might be an
element of
sincerity in his feelings for the “Country”, as he
repeatedly spoke of
“decent boys” that
chose to fight for their country.
But
on the whole, the notion
of
the
Country
might
just
be
a
convenient
platitude
to
veil
or
suppress
his
bitterness about his son’s
death.
(5) The
reasons offered by the fat man when he said a
young man could die happy
were poorly
grounded and hardly convincing. He was indeed
trying to rationalize
the
death
of
his
son,
so
as
to
assuage
his
pain
of
bereavement,
but
the
rationalization was too
fragile to be of any comfort to him. The son might
have
mixed
feelings
about
his
father’s
words.
On
the
one
hand,
he
might
be
able
to
understand
his
father’s
inner
struggle,
but
o
n
the
other,
he
might
feel
uncomfortable about his
father saying he died satisfied.
(6) The question is considered “silly”
and “incongruous” from the passengers’ point
of
view.
In
the
eyes
of
other
passengers,
the
fat
man
already
made
his
point
clearly,
and
the
woman
appeared
absent-minded.
Her
question
was
considered
silly
because
the
answer
was
already
evident.
And
it
would
seem
incongruous
with the whole atmosphere. While other
passengers were voicing their agreement
with the fat man, the woman’s
quest
ion was abrupt and unexpected.
This point of view has an emotional
effect that reinforces the fat man’s loneliness.
He
had
to
battle
with
his
emotional
turmoil
all
on
his
own,
with
all
the
other
people
believing he was coping really well.
(7) All these four definitions are
common denotations of the word patriotism, which
is
a controversial notion. It is
morally valuable, for it can arouse noble
sentiments of
heroism within people and
unite them together as a whole nation. But whether
it
should be mandatory is disputable,
for it may be pushed to an extreme and require
people
to
sacrifice
their
personal
interest
for
the
“greater
good”
that
might
sometimes be questionable.
(8) One possible version:
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