Excerpt 19 teacher’s version

interpretation line

character-based: Nathan has reached full recovery from illness and has projects.

theme-based around death. How to counteract death.

About the importance of family links when people are alive, and important because they are the key to your outliving your physical death.

No religious idea however.

situation

Nathan is in hospital for control. He is thinking of his neighbours and about the meaning of an empty bed.

structure of the passage

What happened to the people he met in the hospital.
We are quickly forgotten
He had an idea (prolepsis)
Indeed we are no one
except some famous people
How does an individual gradually get blotted out.. once all the people he knew die
So back to his idea: how to implement it
Justification: aim of the biographies: keep someone’s memory alive, maintain family links, respects for forefathers, importance to maintain a link between generations, important for the individual.
The importance of books. Nathan is cured and involved in action. As he has experienced difficult relationships or moments he wants to bridge the gap between him (who knows) and the others who do not. a deep desire to leave a trace.

characters

mentioned:

Omar Hassim Ali 1

Rodney Grant 7

place

hospital

tone

Quite serious about death (in contrast with other excerpts. No irony, rather bitterness at first but he is able to react positively by taking action or at least by building up a project.

a touch of humour in the “biography insurance” 35

ironic and serious at the same time in the conclusion of the passage: “one should never underestimate the power of books”

death is equated with

Oblivion. Nathan is fighting against the idea of death, of people being forgotten; (perhaps a fear that applies to himself.. but he is trying to find solutions to prevent people’s oblivion. Imagining a business based on it, which means that he feels fully alive. He even imagines how to organize this business.

lexical field of oblivion/ uncertainty

wondered if he had been transferred 5/

lexical field of death

dead 5, force of erasure, blotting out, the realm of darkness and oblivion8, death X2 9, die 14, buried in the ground 15 (reminiscent of the Bible: return to earth what we are all condemned to), we were gone.. 16 obituaries 16

lexical field of life/ of the living ones

dead people can survive in their works/

thought process

pondered 9, thought 1,wondered 2, remember 2; imagining 6; hypothesis 6;

idea X 4 times between lines 9 and 12.

time elements

uncertain future 7/ every hour for the rest of my life 12;

prolepsis: his idea 10-11 little by little all traces of that life disappear. 20

six months after the subject had died 41 now/ back to life 43; once, for the rest of their lives 45; outlive them, outlive us all. 46

the individual in the world

No one 13 (his argument is that it is the same for all) repeated 4 times. a sense of doom for the ordinary individuals and a feeling of injustice, that one can be forgotten so fast. Nathan is going to stop that.

Six months after the subject had died 41 (the person has become a subject in the mean time... has nearly lost his identity.)

how are people referred to

names of his co-patients

the men 8 / no one / friends and families 15; the powerful and the famous 17 opposed to the ordinary , the unsung, the workaday people. (opposition family/ other people; through social conditions; a person 20 (most lives 20) inventor, architect, most people 21; family relationships: stronger than professional success. assistant manager or factory worker opposed to father, parent, brother etc 40their loved one.43, the forgotten ones 27

intrusion of the world in people’s lives or deaths

no obituaries / no monuments 21 inventions/

images

haunted by some mysterious force of erasure, blotting out the men/ ushering them into a realm of darkness and oblivion .7,8/

clues/ reason

opposition between fears and reason

When you have no answers, you make up hypotheses. Difficulty to maintain some reason when your fears are irrational.

reasonable supposition 5; I couldn’t help imagining 6; I didn’t have a single scrap of evidence 6;

death real or imagined 9 there are several types of death. You are dead when you have no longer any projects. /you are more dead when people have forgotten you.

echoes

§ Nathan has saved Tom / has settled Harry’s case by avenging him/ has rescued Lucy then her mother. Now has found the means of preventing oblivion.

§ Echoes of his former work in the biography insurance 34. (once a rascal, always a rascal, it seems to be the same for the insurance business.” permanence in ever changing life.

action

.No action he is thinking, imagining... but thinking of action.

in imagination “resurrect” 44, publish, write

tenses

past and past perfect : wondered if he hadn’t been transferred 4 we are in a narrative.

conditional: retrospectively the future” we would all die” 15 (general truth for the future) and projects “would be commissioned” 29

present: general truths: “most lives vanish” 20

uncountables

paragraph 2 mostly most opposed to a few

the project

Writing books about ordinary people when they die to fight oblivion.

material aspects: form/ payment/ growing business, solutions to tackle the problem/ targeted public (not just the rich)/

Tries to establish a link between the dead and the living ones before traces disappear.

“one should never underestimate the power of books”

books: a means of overcoming solitude, illness,

A means of assessing one’s position in life. Understanding where one is.

a means of keeping alive for children and grandchildren or future generations.

Importance of family links.

extrait 19 Inspiration p. 302-303

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