Riassunto esame lingua inglese, libro consigliato: Crimes stories 20th century stories

A short story

A short story is shorter than a novel but longer than a poem. It usually focuses on one main event, has a limited number of characters, and takes place within a short space of time.

History of the short story

Before people could read or write, storytellers traveled from village to village telling stories. The first written stories were born from this tradition. For example, in the 14th century, we have Boccaccio’s Decameron and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (short stories put together as one long story). The first modern stories appeared in the 19th century, usually in magazines and journals, focusing on realism, real and contemporary situations. By the 20th century, they focused on psychology, inner thoughts, and feelings of the characters. The plot became less linear, with open or ambiguous endings, leaving free interpretation to the reader. Today, short stories are published in collections called anthologies or in online magazines.

Crime story

A crime story describes how a crime is committed, and often how it is solved. There is a wide range of crimes (most popular: theft and murder), of criminals (cold-blooded killers, gangsters, robbers), and ways of describing the crime. The classical one – for example, Agatha Christie – focuses on detection: finding out who the criminal is and how it is committed. These are called whodunnit stories. The main characters are detectives or investigators, for passion or as a job. Another type of crime story focuses on the personality and psychology of the criminal, understanding the criminal mind or the reactions of the victim. Crime stories are a safe way to examine the criminal mind and the criminal world; they have an element of mystery (solving the crime, sometimes there are clues), competition (with the detectives), and a sense of justice (good triumphing over evil).

Crime stories were in religious writings (Chaucer, Shakespeare) then in the 19th century, they were real accounts of crimes and court cases. By the 20th century, crime stories were published in cheap magazines (genre known as pulp fiction), or they were about police procedurals – how the police solved crimes.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. He is considered the inventor of the detective story. His father abandoned him, and his mother died from tuberculosis. He was adopted by a tradesman. He joined the army but was kicked out for disobedience. He created a full-time career for himself as a writer, publishing short stories and working as a critic and editor for a few journals. He married Virginia, who died of tuberculosis. He was shocked and then died for unknown reasons.

Title

To tell tales is normally used to describe children informing an adult about something bad that another child has done. Tell-tale is referred to the one informing.

The Tell-Tale Heart

The storyteller is nervous and is trying to convince the reader that he is not mad, but he says that he has a disease that sharpened his senses. He lives with an old man and wants to kill him without motivation. He loves him, but his eye drives him mad. He proceeds carefully and calmly: every night (for seven nights) he sneaks into his room and watches the old man sleeping, waiting for the Evil eye to open. On the eighth night, he feels powerful. The old man notices that someone is in the room because of the sound of the younger man’s thumb slipping on the fastening of the lantern. He is very frightened, realizes he is about to die, and his heartbeat quickens and grows louder. The young man yells and pulls the bed over him; the old man shrieks. The young man is relieved because he cannot hear the loud noise of the heartbeat anymore and because his eye won’t bother him anymore. He is silent, precise, and careful: he dismembers the corpse and puts it under the floorboards. The police knock at his door at 4 a.m. Three officers say that the neighbor heard a shriek during the night. The young man is very smart and confident, sits upon the spot where the corpse is, and starts talking. He says the older man wasn’t there and that the shriek was his own in a dream. The officers seem convinced by his story. He is at ease but suddenly hears a noise, tries to cover it, but it grows louder. He starts yelling, swearing, and then admits the deed.

Themes

The main theme is madness and obsession, and in general, the psychology of a murderer. He insists that he is not mad. It also explores the theme of guilt and repentance, and how his guilt affects his behavior once the crime has been committed, whether he feels sorrow or regret, etc.

The Red-Headed League

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

He is the creator of the great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. He was very interested in real-life criminal cases, political issues, and so on. He studied medicine and worked in a private medical practice, but he also wrote stories. He then became a full-time author. He solved two crimes already solved by the police but the police were wrong, and two innocent men were freed from prison. He suffered many tragedies in his life, for example, the loss of his father, son, and brother during the 1st World War. He became depressed and wrote about spiritualism and questioned life after death.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson

Sherlock Holmes is considered the greatest fictional detective and Doyle’s short-story problem-investigation-solution and explanation has been imitated by many crime writers. This tale is one of 56 Sherlock Holmes stories. Sherlock and his faithful assistant Dr Watson became classic characters familiar to many people. Holmes lived in London, famous for his intelligence, powers of observation, and logical reasoning. He is eccentric, had a classical education, plays the violin, and smokes a pipe. Sometimes he is arrogant and moody. He carries his hat, his magnifying glass, and his pipe. Watson is the narrator of all but four of the 56 stories. He is intelligent (not as much as Holmes), brave, and loyal. The story is set in London at the end of the 19th century.

Pawnbrokers

A pawnbroker is someone who lends money to people in exchange for a valuable object. The owner can buy back the object with money, or the pawnbroker can sell it.

The Red-Headed League

The story begins in Holmes’ flat; he just heard a unique story by Mr. Wilson, a pawnbroker. He made him repeat the story for Watson. Watson watches his physical appearance to understand something about his background, and Holmes notices it. While Watson couldn’t understand anything, Holmes did understand some information: he has done manual labor, and he has been to China, etc. Mr. Wilson is surprised. He gave a piece of paper to Watson, and it said “To the Red-headed League” and encouraged all red-headed people (over 21 and from London) to apply for a well-paid job. Mr. Wilson talks about himself, his small business near the City, and his assistant Vincent Spaulding who gave him the paper and encouraged him to apply. The assistant works half-wages. He told Mr. Wilson that The League was founded by an American millionaire who was red-headed and had sympathy for all red-headed. When he died, he left instructions to create this League. Mr. Wilson is convinced and goes to the office with his assistant. The street was full of red-headed people, but thanks to the assistant, they avoided a queue and got into the office, where a red-headed small man called Mr. Duncan Ross said he was perfect for the job and hired him. He had to work from ten to two: his task was to copy the Encyclopaedia Britannica and not to leave the office for any reason. He works for eight weeks and leaves the business to the assistant. After eight weeks, he goes to work and finds a card saying that the League was dissolved and the office was closed. The same morning he went to Holmes to solve the mystery. Holmes and Watson laughed because they found the story bizarre. The detective asks questions about his assistant (how long had he been with you, why did you pick him, what is he like, are his ears pierced). After Mr. Wilson leaves, Holmes concentrates, closing his eyes, smoking a pipe, and going with Watson to a classical concert. Before going there, they visit Saxe-Coburg square, where all happened. It was small, shabby. He goes into the pawnbroker’s shop and asks the assistant for directions (he notices his wrinkled knees), then they go to the back of the same street, which is completely different: it is busy, with shops and businesses. After the concert, he made up his mind and tells Watson to meet at 10 to his flat and to bring a gun. Watson feels stupid because he listened to the same information but didn’t solve the mystery. At his flat, there are three people: Watson, a police officer, and Mr. Merryweather (a bank director). He leads them into gates, and then they finally reach the Cellar of the city branch of one of the principal London banks, where there were 30,000 gold coins, borrowed from the Bank of France. They sit in the dark waiting for the robbers. Suddenly two men open the cellars: he is John Clay, a criminal, a murderer, and a thief, and his accomplice escapes through the tunnel (but there were police officers at the end to arrest him). The bank director wants to repay Holmes because he avoided a bank robbery; Holmes says he expects the bank refunds, but he is also repaid by this unique case. Later, in the morning, he explains to Watson (and to the readers) his reasoning. The assistant was John Clay and incites Mr. Wilson to apply for the job, the red-headed was the accomplice that hired Mr. Wilson. They kept Mr. Wilson busy with the new job while they were building a tunnel from the shop to the cellar; as soon as they finished, the League closed, and they tried stealing the money. Watson admires Holmes, he is speechless, while Holmes is quite sad because now he is bored again.

Alexander McCall Smith

He is a Scottish writer. He writes detective stories, texts on medicine and law, and children’s books. He was born in Zimbabwe, studied in the UK, and went back to Africa to teach at the Faculty of Law. Then he returned to Edinburgh to work as a professor of medical law at the university. He then gave up his position to concentrate on his writing. He now lives in Edinburgh with his wife and two daughters, and he continues to write.

No Place to Park

This short story first appeared in a magazine in 2007. It is set in Western Australia, in its state’s capital city Perth, whose port is Fremantle. The main character lives in a bungalow with a girlfriend Frizzie in Cottesloe, a beach between Perth and Fremantle. He is a crime writer. He attends a festival for crime writers concerning realism in crime fiction where one critic is complaining that too many stories talk about murders, autopsy scenes, graphic details of wounds... He challenges them to write about something very common like a parking offense. Everyone laughs, even George Harris, but then he starts thinking seriously about it. He liked to surf, but he was afraid of sharks. He had an idea for his next book: the story was about rivalry among surfers; one would have faked a shark attack to murder the other surfer with a knife with the same shape as a shark’s tooth. He decided to give up the story; he wasn’t excited about it. He starts the new project: the story about illegal parking. He thinks about a love affair between two parking officers who meet in secret, where motorists were always parking illegally. He went to the traffic department at his local police and got permission to follow one of the officers. Friday was a good day because farmers came into town and parked illegally. The officer seems very committed to giving fines to these people. He sees a car parked illegally and writes the list of violations, then they see another car parked illegally with two people inside having a heated conversation. The officer asks to see the driver’s license, and he looked shocked. They ran away, and there was a corpse under the car, with graphic details as the ones described by crime writers (eyes open but unseeing, fingers and feet at an odd angle). The officer took the registration number of the car; the driver and the companion were well-known criminals. One of them was the brother of a surfer who George and Frizzie knew. His brother asked George not to give evidence (George was called as a witness in the murder trial). He refuses, and the brother tried to intimidate him, saying that something ba