![]() ![]() Importantly, they’re consistent for each character, too, referring to common details each time – a later description of the sailor is ‘the boy with the long freckled face and the pointed nose, bare-bodied except for a pair of faded brown bathing shorts’. His chest was not very sunburned and there were freckles there too, and a few wisps of pale-reddish hair.’. CharacterĬharacter descriptions are all very neat, like this description of the sailor: ‘He was about nineteen or twenty with a long freckled face and a rather sharp birdlike nose. Dahl uses the verb ‘was’ a lot, when perhaps more active verbs might have served the story better – although some may argue that it blunts and simplifies the tone, usefully. The man’s phonetically-presented dialogue (‘”Excuse pleess, but may I sit here?”’) becomes frustrating, or at least unnecessary. Some aspects probably wouldn’t be as readily accepted in modern stories. He became a faint, misty, quickly moving outline, like the spokes of a turning wheel.’) There are very few descriptions involving metaphor, so they are impactful when they appear (‘She shook him so fast you couldn’t see him any more. The tone is precise (‘I went over and sat down under a yellow umbrella where there were four empty seats’) and, at the start, mild (‘It was pleasant to sit and watch the bathers splashing about in the green water’). The man seemed serious about the bet and he seemed serious about the business of cutting off the finger. One of the main functions of the narrator’s involvement in the story is that his observations tell rather than show: ‘There was a silence then, and I could see that the little man has succeeded in disturbing the boy with his absurd proposal.’ And later, ‘She seemed an awfully nice woman.’ In fact, Dahl uses the narrator to sum up the situation several times, as in: ‘I didn’t know what to make of it all. ![]() The story is told in first person perspective, close but with direct thoughts attributed using phrases like ‘I told myself’. He’s a barely-involved observer to the main events of the plot. The narrator sees that her hand is missing three fingers. She informs the group that the man is an inveterate gambler, that the Cadillac is hers, and that she has won all of the man’s possessions for herself. After the sailor reaches eight successful strikes of the lighter, a woman enters. The sailor takes the bet and, in the man’s hotel room, they set it up. The mysterious man proposes a bet: if the sailor can successfully light his lighter ten times in a row, he will win the man’s Cadillac if he fails, the man will chop off the sailor’s little finger. He meets a man from South America, then they are joined by an American sailor and an English girl. If you haven’t read it already, you can find the 1948 story itself online here.Īn Englishman spends time beside the swimming pool of a Jamaica hotel. ![]()
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May 2023
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