Tatiana Pavlova
Text analysis
The apple-tree by John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy (1867—1933), a prominent English novelist, playwright and short-story writer, came from an upper middle-class family. He was educated at Harrow and Oxford and was called to the Bar. His first novel (From the Four Winds) was published in 1897, but it was The Man of Property that won him fame. Among his numerous novels The Forsyte Saga and A Modern Comedy are the most prominent. They give a truthful picture of English bourgeois society at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The Apple-Tree (1917) is one of the most popular long short stories written by John Galsworthy.
In the novel «The apple-tree» the author tells us about two young guys, Frank Ashurst and Robert Garton, who after their last year together at college were on a tramp.
As their journey was too long and Ashurst*s football knee had given out, they decided to find some place to put up, but there were no people and farms round them.
While they were sitting near the river and taking rest, a young girl – the maiden, rural ninny was passing through the forest and invited them to her farm.
Her image has stuck in the Ashurst*s mind so deep, that even when he took a rest on her farm, she still was in his memory.
For the first sight we will not be able to find out some extraordinary problem or main line of this novel, but we all know that the most difficult things are the easiest to be founded and contra.
Two close friends and very different in characters are regard the world in different ways. Ashurst idealistic and romantic, Robert –a practical man.
They have a different picture of university, life and happy in their mind. The author shows this idea in the dialog when Ashurst asks a young girl about everything and Robert asks two simple and important questions: her name and if she cans to shelter them.
The difference between two friends is shown in the description of their appearance: Ashurst pale, idealistic, full of absence; Garton queer, round-the-corner, knotted, curly, like some primeval beast. Both had a literary bent; neither wore a hat. Ashurst's hair was smooth, pale, wavy; and had a way of rising on either side of his brow, as if always being flung back; Garton's was a kind of dark un-fathomed mop.
The whole novel can be divided into three parts:
The absence of the culmination is very strange thing in the composition of any story, but this novel is endures in a peaceful and regular manner. The only thing that breaks the composition is a sudden, long dialog in the middle of the third person narration. The author uses this stylistic device to emphasize the difference between two friends.
If summarize this three factors we can conclude that the main idea of this novel is to show the different ways of being happy and having a piece in the heart for different people.
People, who live in the megapolyses, run very big and important business, have a great deal of money, popularity and glory, dream about a quite nook on the farm, where they can be with their families on alone and just enjoy the life. And people from the countries dream to escape from routine rhythm of village life and have a lot of money and values.
But some people can feel happy just looking at the sunrise, blue sky, listening the birds singing ,murmuring of the stream or lust looking at the beautiful woman in her natural beauty.
This is the main line of the novel «The apple-tree», - to enjoy the things which you have in their natural manifestation.
Source: http://www.durov.com/study/an_apple-tree-1025.doc
Web site to visit: http://www.durov.com
Author of the text: indicated on the source document of the above text
If you are the author of the text above and you not agree to share your knowledge for teaching, research, scholarship (for fair use as indicated in the United States copyrigh low) please send us an e-mail and we will remove your text quickly. Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use)
The information of medicine and health contained in the site are of a general nature and purpose which is purely informative and for this reason may not replace in any case, the council of a doctor or a qualified entity legally to the profession.
The texts are the property of their respective authors and we thank them for giving us the opportunity to share for free to students, teachers and users of the Web their texts will used only for illustrative educational and scientific purposes only.
All the information in our site are given for nonprofit educational purposes