Read carefully the following extract from a short story.
Before this extract, Walter Henderson, an office worker in New York, has been
worried that he might lose his job. His boss, George Crowell, calls him into his
office.
“Pull up a chair, Walt,” he said. “Smoke?”
“No thanks.” Walter sat down and laced his fingers tight between his
knees.
Crowell shut the cigarette box without taking one for himself, pushed it
aside and leaned forward, both hands spread flat on the plate-glass top of
the desk. “Walt, I might as well give you this straight from the shoulder,”
he said, and the last shred of hope slipped away. The funny part was that
it came as a shock, even so. “Mr. Harvey and I have felt for some time
that you haven’t quite caught on to the work here, and we’ve both very
reluctantly come to the conclusion that the best thing to do, in your own
best interests as well as ours, is to let you go. Now,” he added quickly,
“this is no reflection on you personally, Walt. We do a highly specialized
kind of work here and we can’t expect everybody to stay on top of the
job. In your case particularly, we really feel you’d be happier in some
organization better suited to your—abilities.”
Crowell leaned back, and when he raised his hands their moisture left two
gray During the vacation, and carrying it forward, it would be beneficial
for Namish to read a variety of genres to develop an all-round fluency in
the language, and also to read closely for meaning, reflecting and
commenting on what he reads to further develop critical thinking. Doing
one close reading quiz on Read Theory.org every other day will also help
build close reading skills. The Day and Common Lit.org are other sources
to explore for varied reading.perfect prints on the glass, like the hands of
a skeleton. Walter stared at them, fascinated, while they shrivelled and
disappeared.
“Well,” he said, and looked up. “You put that very nicely, George. Thanks.”
Crowell’s lips worked into an apologetic, regular guy’s smile. “Awfully
sorry,” he said. “These things just happen.” And he began to fumble with
the knobs of his desk drawers, visibly relieved that the worst was over.
“Now,” he said, “we’ve made out a check here covering your salary
through the end of next month. That’ll give you something in the way of—
severance pay, so to speak—to tide you over until you find something.”
He held out a long envelope.
“That’s very generous,” Walter said. Then there was a silence, and
Walter realized it was up to him to break it. He got to his feet. “All right,
George. I won’t keep you.”
Crowell got up quickly and came around the desk with both hands held
out—one to shake Walter’s hand, the other to put on his shoulder as they
walked to the door. The gesture, at once friendly and humiliating, brought
a quick rush of blood to Walter’s throat, and for a terrible second he
thought he might be going to cry. “Well, boy,” Crowell said, “good luck
to you.”
“Thanks,” he said, and he was so relieved to find his voice steady that
he said it again, smiling. “Thanks. So long, George.”
There was a distance of some fifty feet to be crossed on the way back to
his cubicle, and Walter Henderson accomplished it with style. He was
aware of how trim and straight his departing shoulders looked to
Crowell; he was aware too, as he threaded his way among desks whose
occupants either glanced up shyly at him or looked as if they’d like to, of
every subtle play of well-controlled emotion in his face. It was as if the
whole thing were a scene in a movie. The camera had opened the action
from Crowell’s viewpoint and dollied back1 to take the entire office as a
frame for Walter’s figure in lonely, stately passage; now it came in for a
long-held close-up of Walter’s face, switched to other brief views of his
colleagues’ turning heads (Joe Collins looking worried, Fred Holmes trying
to keep from looking pleased), and switched again to Walter’s viewpoint
as it discovered the plain, unsuspecting face of Mary, his secretary, who
was waiting for him at his desk with a report he had given her to type.
“I hope this is all right, Mr. Henderson.”
Walter took it and dropped it on the desk. “Forget it, Mary,” he said.
“Look, you might as well take the rest of the day off, and go see the
personnel manager in the morning. You’ll be getting a new job. I’ve just
been fired.”
1 dollied back: moved along a track (cinema term)
Q1. Comment on any one literary technique used by the author.
There is a use of a metaphor which enhances the overall mood of the
text and makes everything much clearer to the reader. The
comparision between the situation and it being like a movie shows us
that the protagonist is Walter and it also showed us how Walter was
battling several emotions. This is further enhanced by the anticlimactic
ending wherein it seems as if Walter knew this was going to
happen and just accepted it as it is.
Q2. Justify the tone of the passage for the readers.
The tone of the passage is full of tension. This sense of tension
is shows when the narrator says that "there was a silence." Such
visual imagery helps the reader visualize the scene. The instance
when there was silence shows us both of them didn't know what
to say, which hightened anticipation, therefore forcing the readers
to really be provoked to know what's going to happen next.
Moreover, when the two men shook hands, there was a "quick
rush of blood to Walter’s throat," and for a "terrible second," he
"thought he might be going to cry." This shows the immsense
amount of emtions that Walter was dealing with at the moment.
Additionally, the narrator didn't make it clear at the start, what
was going on - the text began revealing things slowly, hence the
tension.
Q3. List any two realizations you make about Crowell’s character.
1. Empathatic
2. Nervous
3. Considerate
Q4. “It was as if the whole thing were a scene in a movie.” Comment on
the usefulness of this metaphor.
The metaphor "It was as if the whole thing were a scene in a
movie." is extremely useful in order to help the readers visualize the
scene and influence the reader's mind. The comparsion of the scene to a
movie creats vivid imagery as the reader is able to understand the the
characters and the situation better, as if they were in a movie. This
enhances the overall engagement of the reader with the text. Moreover,
some of the following lines relating to this metaphor enhances the
emotional impact the text has on the readers with sounds and visuals
(including different point of views). This made the scene dramatic in
nature by describing the real life situation.
