Analysis of "The Escape"

      Svishcheva Victoria Lg-07-1

      Analysis of “The Escape”

     The text under analysis is the short story written by Somerset Maugham.

     The main idea relates to the relationships between men and women. The main idea is to stay sincere and honest to people you love. Moreover, one should stay honest to a person he/she has fallen out of love with. It is mean to lead them astray.

     The aim of this short story is to make people understand that they should discuss problems concerning the relationships in order to save them.

     Ruth’s letter to Roger is the climax of “The Escape” because all the events preceding this one have been tensing the atmosphere. Her letter to him was the point of no return as she told him about her soon wedding.

     The style is semiformal as we can find informal words such as “hefty fellow”, “dreadfully sorry” and formal ones such as “conscious”, “hazards”, “oath”, “to reconsider one’s position”. The tone is ironic starting from the title of the story and continuing in the very beginning of the story when the author describes the unsuccessful ways to escape from marriage made by his chums. The type of narration is imaginary as the events of the story took place in the real place but at the same were made up by the author.

     From the grammatical point of view there is a great number of complex and compound sentences with homogeneous predicates, for instance: “Sometimes they were too large and sometimes they were too small, sometimes they were too far from centre of things and sometimes they were too close; sometimes they were too expensive and sometimes they wanted too much repairs; sometimes they were too stuffy and sometimes they were too airy; sometimes they were too dark and sometimes they were too bleak.” They are used to emphasize the duration of the similar actions

     We can find Complex Object while reading, for instance, “he took her to dine at restaurants” or “he took Ruth to see a number of houses”.

     Some Complex subjects are used, for instance, “they seemed to be on the point of filling with tears” or “it was sure to die”.

     From the syntactical point of view we can find:

     Parallel constructions “sometimes they were too large, sometimes they were too small, sometimes they were too expensive and sometimes they were too stuffy”, describe Roger’s scheme.

     Rhetorical question “or should I call it a quality?” is used to provoke, emphasize Ruth’s eyes making men defenseless.

     Parenthesis (With a tooth brush for all his luggage, so conscious was he of his danger and the necessity for immediate action) gives us the understanding that the man had everything ready to escape from the fiancée, (in her appealing way) leads us to realize Ruth’s character more distinctly.

     Repetition “his common sense, his prudence, his worldly wisdom” used to emphasize the fact that Roger differed from other men. The repetitions of the word “eyes” make us pay our attention to this Ruth’s peculiarity. Roger took an interest in her destiny and was ready to relieve it: the repetition of the pronouns “she” and “her” in Roger’s speech. The repetition of the expression “to have a mind to” reveals the conflict of Roger’s and Ruth’s interests.

     From the lexical point of view we can find:

     The epithets “instant (flight)”, “the inevitable (loom)”, “menacingly” show us fear and trembling of men in face of marriage. They don’t know and don’t respect women, the epithet “fickle” confirms it, that why they are afraid of difficulties of the marriage. The epithets “acutely conscious”, “solemn (oath)” and “immoderately high (figure)” stress the importance, significance of his decision; as to the epithet “pathetic (look)” and the metaphor “heart-strings” (at the same time it is a cliché), they produce the humorous effect. ( “helpless little thing”, “rotten time”, “unfortunate”, “poor dear”, “dreadfully sorry,  “sufficient experience”, “careful”, “defenseless”, “splendid dark eyes”, “the most moving eyes”, “big and lovely eyes”, “stupid”, “scheming”, “assiduous”, “gallant”).

     Clichés (“the world was too much for her”, “stand between the hazards of life and this helpless little thing”, “how wonderful it would be to take the sadness out of those big and lovely eyes”) which are peculiar to the description of ordinary situations concerning love affairs, so we see what kind of story “The Escape” is. The narrator provokes us to perceive it ironically.

     The Metaphor “the gift of pathos” emphasizes Ruth’s quality. The metaphor “a little lamb” displays hopelessness of Ruth’s life.

     The simile “as hard as nails” add some points to her description, so the method of character-drawing here is direct. (one more simile: “Like an angel”).

     If speaking about target reader, I can point out that the story was written not for deep reflections and speculations but for the readers to bring a clearly understandable idea of being honest. The author just reminds one more time that one should stay honest to a person he/she has fallen out of love with. Consequently, the target reader is both men and women between 16 and 50, as they usually have such problem.

     As for me, I liked this story. It seems to me rather funny but still it has aroused a kind of indignation. I think the problem is up-to-date and it was relevant to the time even 2000 years ago. There are a lot of books on this topic, so that this story doesn’t stand out against the others of that sort.