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Louise was the joy she felt up in the room, not the joy that she felt when she saw Brently.
This tone reflects real life in many ways. Our lives can change so quickly, and very good and
bad things can be set into motion because of an innocent mistake. More importantly, the irony in
the story shows us that we often don t understand people or ourselves. We often have certain assump-
tions about how people feel or should feel in certain situations. But often those assumptions and
expectations are wrong. And those assumptions can make people feel trapped and even hopeless.
For example, Louise had  only yesterday . . . thought with a shudder that life might be long.
Maybe it s a little bit callous of Louise to feel such joy at the death of her husband. But maybe
Chopin is suggesting that it s equally callous of us to judge her without knowing who she really is
and why she feels this way. By using irony and letting us glimpse the real workings of Louise Mal-
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lard s mind and heart,  The Story of an Hour tells us that things are not always what they seem and
we should always look carefully before coming to conclusions about people and their relationships.
Following is a short story by Mark Twain, a noted American author. Read it carefully, and make notes
in your notebook when you think you ve discovered something significant about the characters or the plot.
Remember, when you are finished reading you will be answering questions and writing about the story. See
if you can t anticipate what you might need to include in your analysis at the end of your reading.
LUCK
By Mark Twain
It was at a banquet in London in honor of one of the two or three conspicuously illustrious
English military names of this generation. For reasons which will presently appear, I will with-
hold his real name and titles and call him Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, Y. C., K. C. B.,
etc., etc.
What a fascination there is in a renowned name! There sat the man, in actual flesh, whom I
had heard of so many thousands of times since that day, thirty years before when his name shot
suddenly to the zenith from a Crimean battlefield, to remain forever celebrated. It was food and
drink to me to look, and look, and look at the demi-god; scanning, searching, noting: the quiet-
ness, the reserve, the noble gravity of this countenance; the simple honesty that expressed itself
all over him; the sweet unconsciousness of his greatness unconsciousness of the hundreds of
admiring eyes fastened upon him, unconsciousness of the deep, loving, sincere worship welling
out of the breasts of those people and flowing toward him.
The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of mine clergyman now, but had spent
the first half of his life in the camp and field and as an instructor in the military school at Wool-
wich. Just at the moment I have been talking about a veiled and singular light glimmered in his
eyes and he leaned down and muttered confidentially to me indicating the hero of the banquet
with a gesture:
 Privately he s an absolute fool.
This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been Napoleon, or Socrates, or
Solomon, my astonishment could not have been greater. Two things I was well aware of: that the
Reverend was a man of strict veracity and that his judgment of men was good. Therefore I knew,
beyond doubt or question, that the world was mistaken about this: he was a fool. So I meant to
find out, at a convenient moment, how the Reverend, all solitary and alone, had discovered the
secret.
Some days later the opportunity came, and this is what the Reverend told me:
About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy at Woolwich. I was present
in one of the sections when young Scoresby underwent his preliminary examination. I was touched
to the quick with pity, for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely, while he
why dear me, he didn t know anything, so to speak. He was evidently good, and sweet, and lov-
able, and guileless; and so it was exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven
image, and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous for stupidity and igno-
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rance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be
examined again he will be flung over, of course; so it will be simply a harmless act of charity to
ease his fall as much as I can. I took him aside and found that he knew a little of Caesar s history;
and as he didn t know anything else, I went to work and drilled him like a galley-slave on a cer-
tain line of stock questions concerning Caesar which I knew would be used. If you ll believe me,
he went through with flying colors on examination day! He went through on that purely super-
ficial  cram, and got compliments too, while others, who knew a thousand times more than he,
got plucked. By some strangely lucky accident an accident not likely to happen twice in a cen-
tury he was asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill.
It was stupefying. Well, all through his course I stood by him, with something of the senti-
ment which a mother feels for a crippled child; and he always saved himself not just by miracle,
apparently.
Now, of course, the thing that would expose him and kill him at last was mathematics. I
resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so I drilled him and crammed him, and crammed
him and drilled him, just on the line of question which the examiners would be most likely to use,
and then launched him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of the result: to my consternation, he
took the first prize! And with it he got a perfect ovation in the way of compliments. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]