Pair work. Make up and act out situations using the phrases and word combinations.

14. Explain what is meant by:

projections of his own personality or, in different forms, the antithesis of it; to experiment with acquaintances; other-worldly, indeed; too ready to escape into an ambiguous world; the words came haltingly; graying pains; inclined to under-value parish churches; languorous with semicolons and subordinate clauses; sharp and incisive with main verbs and full stops; so ordinary as perhaps to be disguised; if she senses that she's getting a rise out of you she'll go on; he could not bring himself to look at the picture.

15. Answer the questions and do the given assignments:

A. 1. What was written hi the first postcard? 2. Wriy was Walter Streeter glad that he did not have to answer the post­card? Should a writer grudge the time and energy to answer letters? 3. What impression did the second postcard make on Walter Streeter? Why did he dismiss the faint stirrings of curiosi­ty? Should a writer avoid making new acquaintances? 4. What

difficulties did the writer have with his work and how did he try to reassure himself? 5. What did Walter Streeter do with the first two postcards and why did he keep the third? 6. What odd coincidence did Walter Streeter notice? Do you happen to know of any odd coincidences? 7. What thoughts and feelings did the third postcard provoke? What did his friend say? 8. Why did a wave of panic surge up in him when Walter Streeter read the fourth postcard? 9. What was the outcome of his visit to the police?

B. 1. Speak on the overall tone of the passage, specifying the setting and the time, span of the story, plot development and the characters involved. Observe the stylistic means the author employs to keep the reader in suspense: a) the words and phrases denoting emotional reaction; b) the incongruity between the banal contents of the postcards and the importance Walter Streeter attaches to them; c) the contrast in mood and length between the passages separating one postcard from another; d) the word order.

2. Analyse the content of the postcards and bring out the message that they have in common. Comment on the specific intonation of the postcards (which are supposed to reveal the character of the anonymous correspondent and his attitude to­wards Walter Streeter): a) absence of greeting, b) the vocabu­lary and set expressions, c) lexical and syntactical repetition (chiasmus in the first postcard), d) negative and interrogative sentences, e) the play on words (in the second and fourth post­cards).

3. Indicate the lexical and syntactical devices used to depict the character of Walter Streeter: a) which words and phrases help the reader to understand his character? Is the description a complete one? b) what does Walter Streeter himself feel about his own work? Enlarge on the function of inner reported speech and various repetitions (anaphora, anadiplosis, syn­onym repetition), c) is there a lot of figurative language in the story? Give examples of the epithet, metaphor, simile, d) what is the author's attitude towards Walter Streeter? Sympathetic? Indifferent? Unsympathetic? Justify your answer.