My Personal Reading Of The Fox

Giovanni Battista Bredeon IV A

Anno scolastico 2009/2010

TITLE

Considering the title, the story may be about animals, in particular about a fox, but the intelligent reader can understand that the title may be metaphorical and it may refer to an intelligent and smart person.

CONTENT

CHARACTERS MAIN: March, Banford, Henry SECONDARY: Banford's father, Henry's Captain

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

NARRATOR: third person omniscient narrator who alternates Henry's, Banford's and March's points of view. He is omniscient because he knows all of what characters think and feel.

STYLES: The styles used more frequently by the narrator are direct speech, free direct thoughts (es: he thought to himself it would be a good thing to have this place for his own) and free indirect speech (Why not marry March? What if it was rather ridiculous? What if she was older than him? ).

EFFECTS OF THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

CHARACTERIZATION

1. March

2. Banford

3. Henry

SETTING

• Bailey Farm (Berkshire, west of London )

• Station

• Camp (sixty miles from the

farm)

THE MESSAGE

BATTLE OF WILLS

TRADITIONS

ROLE OF THE WOMEN

CONTENT

The fox tells the story of Banford and March, two women of nearly 30 who live in a farm, Bailey Farm, in the west of London during wartime (1914-18). They rear chickens, make a living by poultry, a cow, one or two beasts, fowls and ducks when an event breaks their balance: a fox starts to kill their chickens. Life goes on the same for months until a young homeless soldier, Henry, who used to live on the farm time ago, arrives in the late autumn 1918. March immediatly recognizes him with the fox and he is very fascinated by her. As a result a battle of wills between Banford and Henry to conquer March's attention but she doesn't know what she really wants. Henry asks her to marry him and in a first moment she answered in a positive way but when Henry returns to the camp she writes a letter under the influence of Banford, in which she tells him her change of idea. He decides to come back to the farm, Banford dies and Henry and March prepare themselves to escape from England.

EFFECTS OF THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

When the reader comes across a passage where there is a frequent use of free indirect thoughts he feels as if he were inside the character's mind and moreover he feels closer to characters. The narrator makes the reader perceive thoughts and considerations thanks to a partial eclipse of himself.The effect of free direct thoughts is that the reader comes to know the message exactly without any narrator's filter and so he is free to make up his mind about the situation.

MARCH• The main categories through which the writer creates the

description of march are: physical aspect, phycological aspect, economic status, health, marital status, skills, age, clothes, appareance, manners.

• The first important piece of information given by the writer is that the two women were usually known by their surnames.

• March recalls also the idea of army and soldiers thus the idea of war that is the context in which events take place(moreover at the time soldiers were me and therefore March as a choice turns out particularly meaningful to the narrative purposes of the story ).

MARCH

• Further more if one considers what to march really means the reader gets the idea of army and soldiers thus the idea of a very defined,

• organized way of walking, following somebody's orders, keeping in time, a perfect example of her personality.

• The narrator focuses the reader's attention also on her complex emotional inner life and on her feelings; the impression conveyed to the reader is that in some parts of the story she is almost sleeping: "So she began to walk slowly after him, in the direction he had gone, slowly, pertinaciously ","she struggled, confusedly she came to herself, and saw him making off ".

• This is important because the writer makes use through the short story of the process of sleeping and the fight to stay awake, symbolizing the struggle between being a traditional woman or a new woman.

BANFORD

• The main categories through which Banford is described are: physical and phycological aspect, economic status, health, marital status, skills, age, actions and reactions.

• Banford, as she was usually known, may be taken from the verb to band or to bend. The first one indicates something that must be hidden, the second one means to be force to submit (Banford has a strong character).

• An important features are Banford's bad nerves, emphasized since the beginning of the story: "Pity you didn't get a shot at him!", "Banford could not keep still", "merely listening to the wind in the pines outside, or the drip of water, was too much for her".

• The description of her behaviour is very modern and it belongs to the period when there started to be the foundations of modern psychoanalysis; in the scene from line 57 to 196 we can define her as neourotic.

HENRY

• The categories through which Henry is characterized are: age, work, physical aspect, previously travels, place of birth and upbringing, manners, actions and reactions.

• At first he is referred to in different ways: as a man's voice, as a young soldier, young man, youth, as a younger brother and as "the fox".

• The narrator transmits Henry's curiosity adopting direct speech, through which the reader comes to know other details about the life of the women.

• The reader gets closer to the character when the narrator takes the reader into Henry's feelings and thoughts about March; we understand that he has a strong personality, he is very sure of his decision and he does all the possible to get what he wants.

• When the writer wants to focus the attention on Henry's feelings and wishes he sometimes adopts the repetition of nouns and verbs, for example: the words "soft" and "woman" and the verbs "wanted" and "hoped" are repeated in lines from 105 to 129.