Интерпретация текста Ирвин Шоу

Irwin Shaw

Return to Kansas City

Irwin Shaw is a celebrated American novelist and playwright, whose works, written with power and brilliance made him one of the most popular authors of the 20th century.

The extract under analysis is taken from the short story, which depicts the life situation of a rather young couple unfortunately fulfilled with troubles and dissatisfaction. Having a small baby and a hard-working loving husband Arline never enjoys life. Coming to New York from Kansas, she misses her parents and friends, whom she’s left in the native town and sees no other ways than to put her husband under pressure every day, nagging at him about going back to Kansas.

The story can be subdivided into several parts. The first one immediately shows us the state of things in the family. The story is written in the 3rd person singular, mostly presents the authors narration, suppose Shaw wants the readers to witness the situation- an ordinary quarrel between spouses , which can also seem common to some of the readers.

Arlane, being a mother already, behaves like a small capricious child, feeling jealous because of the time spent on her baby by the husband. Like a kid she also iniclines to exaggerate the tragedy of the situation, as the author puts: “Arline promised…”I won’t feel an ounce better””. Her husband, Eddie, a prizefighter, who is nine years older, but seems to be not clever enough to avoid submission to Arline’s influence.

Shaw is good at detailed descriptions; he generously gives us so many facts that even an inattentive and reluctant reader can imagine the scene well. Eddie i in ” the creased flannel trousers and the wrinkled shirt not concealing the bulky muscles”, is the constant victim to his wife’s cavils “The male sleeping beauty. The long-distance sleeping champion”. Sarcasm, used by the author in Arline’s speech lost upon slowcoach Eddie and Arline continues nagging “Store up your energy? All day long you store up your energy!”

In the second part the atmosphere is intensed as Eddie surprisingly displays his small but quick wits. He lets the window shade fly up in order to stop his wife’s pretended crying. Besides, Eddie states rather a clever suggestion that having lived in NY for quite long time his wife should have found some friends. But Arline, the author uses parallel constractions here  “My mother is in Kansas City. My sister is in Kansas City…”, shows that no matter she exaggerates a bit, she is really obsessed with the idea of going to her native town.

Arline is for sure capricious and egoistic, while her husband shows the qualities of a mature and reasonable man. Shaw expresses his speech by short elliptic sentences “I pay equal attention. My wife and my kid”, as he is a man of action, who is in control of his emotions, no matter how hysteric his wife may be. He manages to ignore caustic remarks, expressed, for example, by litotes “ Mama wants to see baby again. After all it is not unnatural” and he is only puzzled, but not furious by her ironical and sarcastic statement that her parents “are handing out gold pieces with movie tickets in Kansas City”.

The last paragraph can be regarded as the climax of the extract as at first the author shows us that Arline is tired of long tangled explanations of the state of things in her family and she openly states that the mother can’t afford going to NY. But at last, she can’t but taunt Eddie saying that “There are no great prizefighters in our family. I had to marry to bring one into the family”.

It’s a pity we usually don’t value everything we have. We always try to compare our achievements with ones of those who have more, but sometimes it is necessary to look around and see that quite a lot of people don’t have many things you take for granted. I’m not saying, that people should enjoy everything they have and never strive for something more, but, still there are always such people who are dissatisfied of everything they have and they are usually punished by fate losing everything at the same time. Someone said, that people should be more careful with their wishes, as one day they may come true. Arline got everything she wanted in the end, and the author brilliantly shows us how much it cost to her.