8. Heritage of Words (A Story) Dylan Thomas

 

A Story

Writer : Dylan Thomas

 

This story is not written chronological in order. To have better understanding it can be divided into five episodes.

Episode 1:

The narrator describes his uncle, Mr. Thomas and aunt, Mrs. Sarah. The couple looked unmatched to the boy, as the former is abnormally huge and noisy in comparison to the latter, who very small, gauzy and quiet.

Episode 2:

In this part the boy heard about the outing for the first time. Mr. Benjamin Franklyn, a friend of the boy’s uncle, came with the news that everything was going right according to the plan. He said he had collected enough money for the charabanc and twenty cases of pale ale. In addition to this, he also declared to give a pound to every member on the first stoppage. But Will Sentry was sceptical of him as Bob the Fiddle, their ex-treasurer, had swindled money on their last outing. After that it was decided that the new treasurer must show the account clearly.

Episode 3:

On the next Sunday Mr. Franklyn came with the list of the members going on the outing. Everybody got satisfied and the plan was approved. It was decided that they would go on the outing on coming Saturday.

Episode 4:

When Sarah heard that Mr. Thomas is going on an outing, she didn’t like it. She gave him option to choose one between wife and outing. Quite surprisingly uncle chose the latter. But it does not mean that their relation is broken after that, Mr. Thomas raised her onto a chair and got punishment from her, which was always several blows from a china dog. Sarah went to her mother’s house on Saturday leaving the required instructions in a note like every year.

Episode 5:

The final part of the story describes the outing and the peculiar habits of its members from a boy’s perspective. Mr. Thomas took his nephew with him on the outing. The other members did not like that but they soon forgot it as they wanted to start at right time for the Porthcawl. But when they left the village and reached a bit further they found O. Jones missing. They had to return back to village to take him which Mr. Weazley didn’t like. But when they set off again, Mr. Weazley remembered that he had forgotten his teeth at home. He requested them to go back to the village but this time on one listened to him.

In the way they stopped at every pub, assigned the boy to look after the old bus and drank a lot. The whole afternoon passed in drinking and at dusk they reached to a stream. They swam in it and forgot that they had to reach Porthcawl. Actually, they could not reach the place they had aimed for and returned home from the mid-way. While returning home they didn’t find any pub open. Thus, the thirty drunkards decided to assemble into a field and drank more. By this time the boy was so tired that he fell asleep. This humorous story ends by showing how in our day to day life we run after glamour, immediate gains, and amusement. The thirty men never reached the destination they had aimed for as they didn’t realize the value of time. It also makes us realize that how the grown-ups always dictate the children about the right and wrong things but they hardly bother what example they themselves set for them.

A Story

-Dylan Thomas

Summary.

A Story is a short story written by Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas. This story is all about a day’s outing to Charabanc made by a group of adults and it presents the adult’s world humorously from a boy’s perspective.

This story is about the outing of 30 strange adult-only males to Porthcawl by Charabanc called. However, they never reached there as they stopped in every pub on the way.

The narrator of the story is a small boy who is living with his uncle and aunt. The narrator says that there is no beginning and ending in the story, there is something in the middle. The boy compares his uncle Mr. Thomas and his and Mrs. Sarah. Mr. Thomas is a noisy, filthy, irresponsible, drunkard and enormously big.

The boy uses a lot of metaphors and smiles and compares him to buffalo. When Mr. Thomas enters the house, the house looks smaller. Whenever he eats, he litters the waistcoat like a park after a picnic. On the other hand, the narrator compares Mrs. Sarah to a cat. She is very small quite clean hardworking and responsible. She is almost busy in dusting the China dog, cleaning the house and feeding the buffalo. Despite the dissimilarities, they love each other very much.

On every Saturday he allows Mrs. Sarah to beat him on the head. For that, he picks her up and puts on to a chair. Then, she beats him with whatever is in her hand but almost all the time see uses the china dog.

They have their own shop in front of their house where Mr. Thomas and his friends have gathered together in the shop to discuss the outing. Mr. Thomas is the leader of the group, they submit the list of the people to him. His friends are also dirty, filthy and careless like him. Benjamin Franklin is appointed the treasure of the outing. Benjamin reported that he had collected enough money for the bus fare and 20 cases of pale ale (Light Beer). He also complained with Mr. Thomas for being followed by Will Sentry all the times. Will Sentry says that he follows him every time because Benjamin may misuse the fund like Bob The Fiddle last year.

As the outing group talks and behaves, the members seem to be careless and stupid and only thinking about themselves.

Mrs. Sarah doesn’t like her husband to go outing because he drinks so much. She threatens to go to her mother’s home if he goes outing. But Mr. Thomas says that he and outing can’t be separated from each other.

Despite his irresponsible manner, she loves him so much. When she goes to her motherhouse, she prepares some eggs and leaves a note to him. She also tells him to take off the boots before going to bed.

As there is no one to look after the boy, Mr. Thomas wants to carry the narrator with them. The outing members don’t want to take any women, children and old people to the outing because they think that they can create problems on the way.

On the day of outing everyone gatherers and gets on Charbanac. As they go out of the village Mr. Thomas notices that old O. Jones is left behind. Then they go back to his house in order to receive him, but the old man proudly says he doesn’t want to go out at all. Mr. Weazely creates another problem on the way saying that he forgets his teeth on the mantelpiece.

As they reached the mountain sheep, at the beginning the landowner welcomes them as a wolf welcomes sheep for eating them. Mr. Thomas tells the boy to stay outside and look after the bus. He is alone and plays with the cows. He chases them by throwing stones at them.

After some time the narrator enters the pub and watch their activities. He finds them completely wild and drunk. They have finished everything including onions in the pub. Then they moved to other pubs one by one. They finished drinks at every pub until evening.

As they head for Porthcawl at the last, they come to a river. They decide to stop the bus and play with water. It was very late in the evening so they decided to cancel the trip to Porthcawl. They return from the river when they felt cold. They stopped at the Hermit’s Nest for a rum. After they got drunk they got on the bus for coming back to their houses. Old O. Jones wants to prepare supper in the bus by using primus stone. However, Weazely fells and says that he is about to be suffocated by the smoke. Then they stop the Charbanac and carry everything to the field and start cooking. They take out the remaining cases of beer and start drinking it. Old O. Jones began to cook sausage and crushed potatoes in the middle of the bus. Feeling sleepy and tired narrator began to sleep leaning, under the mountainous waistcoat of his uncle.

Thus, the story ends abruptly without giving hints to the readers.

 

 

 

A story

In an attempt to provide a momentary respite from the rigors of work and the limits of domesticity, a group of men in West Wales go on an annual outing. It has as its ostensible destination the town of Porthcawl, but it is actually designed to stop at every inviting public house along the way. During the course of the year, a fund is gradually accumulated sufficient to purchase twenty cases of pale ale to supplement the fare of the local pubs and to hire a sightseeing bus for transportation. The story is told from the perspective of a young boy with a poet’s flair for descriptive language and a fascination with the eccentricities of the men he accompanies. Because the boy lives in relatively meager circumstances with his uncle’s family in a small house adjoining their tiny shop, his range of social circumstances is limited to the intricate detail of the shop, his observations of the peculiarities of his uncle’s friends, and the energetically inventive stretch of his imagination. He first hears of the event when he reads an advertisement for sheep-dip, “which was all there was to read.”

Because he spends so much time with his relatives, he has created an image of them that gives them a dimension beyond the mundane facts of their lives. His uncle is described as a huge old buffalo bursting the bounds of the little house; his aunt is reduced to a tiny mouselike creature. When his uncle’s friends gather to plan their yearly outing, the boy turns his enthusiasm for local mythmaking toward their individualistic turns of speech, rendering their banter as the declarations of men with a singular capability, each exhibiting a skill appreciated and encouraged by the others, and each with a local history that includes some memorable feat from past excursions. There are certain conventions that have become a part of the preparation for the trip, including a temporary tiff in which the boy’s aunt, Sarah Thomas, withdraws to her mother’s house for the weekend. The uncle’s decision to include the boy is a change in the routine, although not without some historical precedent, greeted predictably with good-natured, characteristic complaints before the men subside into tacit acceptance and find other things about which to disagree.

The tour bus leaves the village on a beautiful August morning, making a brief return to collect old O. Jones who, typically, has missed the bus. With impeccable timing, the men arrive at the first public house just as it opens. The boy is instructed to guard the bus against thieves—a preposterous notion—and occupies himself by wistfully looking at the cows while the men carouse in the bar, feeling a familiar sense of isolation (“on the lonely road, the lost, unwanted boy, and the lake-eyed cows”) that is at the root of his poetic portraiture. When the men emerge, they are already becoming garrulous and boisterous, a mode of behavior that is compounded by further stops at a series of such exotically named pubs as the Twll in the Wall, the Sour Grapes, the Shepherd’s Arms, and the Bells of Aberdovey. The boy remains an observer as the procession continues; he records the men’s joyous exclamations, which reveal them in the spirit of freedom that is the goal of their journey. At the close of the day, he describes them as “thirty wild, wet, pickled, splashing men.”

At the last stop, a stranger tries to impress everyone with spurious boasts, only to be devastatingly exposed through the rapier wit of Enoch Davies, evidence of the bountiful effects of the entire enterprise. As the bus heads home through the moonlight, the men continue their idiosyncratic behavior with hilarious persistence. Mr. Weazley demands they stop for another drink, while Jones begins to cook supper on his portable stove. Because all the pubs are closed, the party stops and Jones sets up a makeshift kitchen in a field. While he prepares a classic Welsh meal of sausage and mash, his contribution to the gathering, the men drink and sing, their dull cares banished momentarily. The wonderful mood of celebration and ease is evoked in an image of serenity as the boy recalls that he drifted to sleep, feeling safe against his uncle’s large waistcoat. For a moment, separated from the obligations of their lives and wives, the company of men has come in contact with eternity.

ONLY ANSWERS ARE HERE ! CONSULT BOOK FOR QUESTIONS !!

        1.     The boy, the narrator, feels that he is very happy and boring. He smells tobacco, cheese, sweet biscuits and snuff. His friends too are of the same type. They are all care free, good for nothing fellows.

        2.     The relation between Thomas and his wife seems good. She lets him drink a little and on Sunday she doesn’t let him play checkers. When she gets angry, Thomas lifts her up on the chair or on his arm and she hits him with a China dog on his head. He doesn’t react this beating. She doesn’t like his outings so she goes to her mother’s house, although, she prepares some eggs for him. She orders him to take the shoes off before going to bead. So, instead of some dissatisfaction the relation seems good.

        3.     My wife gave me a choice either to sit with her or to go outing but I chose to go outing and she went to her mother’s house. On Sunday, I went to Porthcawl with my friends. I took my nephew with me to the trip but my friends opposed and soon they forgot it. On the way Mr. Weazley made me laugh because he wanted to bring his teeth from the house as he forget thinking of eating anything but I suggested to him that there’s no need. We reached a pub and had a lot of alcohol with friends. We discussed a lot about different subjects for a long time. We finished all the things up and went to another pub. The pub was closed but we used to go in through the back door. I sang songs. On the moonlight we got off the bus and went to a stream. We were wet. There was no house on the way so we climbed down the bus and went to the field with some rest cases of beer. We drank all beer and came to our house at midnight.

   4.     Really the plan was to go to Porthcawl for the outings but they never reached there. When they were going there, they found a pub house on the way. They stopped and went to the house for drinking. After 45 minutes they finished all the drinks, so they went to another pub house by bus. They used the back door to drink and the time was up so they returned home. On the way, they sat on the field and finished off the rest of the beers. They reached home at midnight the field and finished off the rest of the beers. They reached home at midnight but they didn’t reach Porthcawl. They sang and talked about Porthcawl. Because of drinking, they didn’t reach the planned place Porthcawl.

     5.     The narrator has used a lot of simile and metaphor and he uses different metaphors and smile for the description of his uncle and aunt, for example, to explain his uncle’s appearance. “like an old buffalo”, “like hawsers”, “loud check meadow” etc. and for his aunt he uses ‘padded paws’, ‘a quick as a flash’ etc. Metaphor and simile are used to make the expression impressive. Simile is with “like” and “as” but metaphor is without them. It is very useful in literature.

Some Important Questions And Answers From “A Story”

Question. Describe the narrator’s uncle and his Aunt.

Ans: The description of Uncle Thomas and Aunt Sarah is quite humorous. The narrator, who is a small boy, has used child imagery to describe them. He has used different similes and metaphors and hints that the couple is unmatched. The Uncle is so huge that the whole room becomes smaller when he comes in side it. He looks like a buffalo squeezed into an airy cupboard. He is very noisy and his voice is compared with the trumpet of an elephant. He doesn’t seem well mannered and when he eats, litters his waistcoat which is as big as a meadow for the boy.

But quite opposite to the husband Mrs. Sarah, the boy’s aunt, is quite small. She hardly makes her presence felt wherever she goes. Unlike her husband, she is soft spoken, which the boy tells is like the squeaking of a mouse. She is also a perfectionist and most of her time goes in arranging and dusting the things in her house. Above all she is a caring wife too. We see when she leaves for her mother’s house in anger she doesn’t forget to remind Mr. Thomas about food.

The description of Mr. Thomas and Mrs. Sarah might appear unmatched from a small boy’s perspective, but the caring attitude of wife towards the husband and willingness of the husband to get the punishment from the wife also suggest that there is a good understanding between them.

Question. How does the boy, the narrator, look at his uncle and his friends?

Answer. The narrator finds his uncle and his friends whimsical and animalistic. He expresses his attitude towards them using several figures of speech related to animals.

At the beginning of the story, the speaker compares his uncle with an old buffalo squeezed into an airing cupboard. At one point in the story, the narrator says that the members of outing rushed out bleating into the bar. Towards the end of the story, the narrator says that Mr. Weazely would cough like a Billy goat.

All these smiles and metaphors justify that the narrator views his uncle and his friends with human beings degenerated into animality.

Question. Write a paragraph to describe the relation between Thomas (the boy’s uncle and his wife).

Answer. The boy’s uncle Mr. Thomas and his wife Mrs. Sarah live their life with the sense of affection and caring.

Sarah didn’t want her husband to go to outing only because he would come home heavily drunk. Thomas chooses to go to an outing not because he didn’t love Sarah, his wife but because he wanted a break from his monotonous life. Even at the state of anger, Sarah took care of her husband very much. Leaving him a note, telling him where the cooked eggs were shows that she was worried about her husband in her absence.

When Thomas knew that his wife was furious with him, he would lift her up in his arms so that she could beat him to pacify her anger. Occasional disputes are a casual part of married life which makes their relationship even more colorful and life-like.

Question. The narrator uses a lot of simile and metaphor in describing the persons in the story. How does he describe his uncle and his aunt?

Answer. The narrator uses the following figures of speech to describe his uncle and aunt.

·         His uncle was like an old buffalo squeezed into an airing cupboard. (simile)

·         He breathes like a brass band. (simile)

·         His waistcoat looked like a picnic spot. (simile)

·         His aunt whisked about on padded paws. (metaphor)

·         She was as quick as a flash (simile)

Question. Describe the owner of the public house, Mountain Sheep.

Answer. The owner of the public house mountain sheep was a long, lean and black fanged man. He had a greased love-curl and pouncing eyes. He welcomed the members of outing simpering like a wolf.

Question. Why didn’t the members of the outing trust Benjamin Franklyn?

Answer. Mr. Frankyln was made the treasure of the outing committee for the current year.

The members of the outing didn’t trust Benjamin Franklyn because of the Bob the Fiddle, who had worked in the same position last year but had bought drinks himself with the money that was collected for an outing. In other words, the fund was misappropriated.

Will Sentry feared that a similar episode could happen again. So he was always on the heels of Mr. Frankylin. Franklin even when to the extent of resigning from the responsibility if Will Sentry continued to be nosy about his duties. So due to fear of repeating history, the member of outing did not trust Benjamin Franklin.

Question. Do you think that “A Story” is not a story proper, but a jumble of various people? Give reasons for your answer.

Answer. Story is one of the genres of literature which narrates past events artistically. The events narrated might be real or fictitious. A story, in the traditional sense of the term, needs to have a tightly-knit plot with a proper beginning (Exposition), rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.

But “A Story” has the narrator himself and he admits that the story has neither proper beginning nor conclusive ending. And there are very few details in the middle. Viewed from this traditional point of view “A Story” can’t be called a proper story as it lacks prerequisites of a story.

However, the definition of a story has greatly changed in the modern and post-modern times. The critics have begun to feel that the traditional form of the story cannot represent the changed realities of modern and post-modern types. As a result, there has been great change in the form of writing a story. If analyzed from this modern and post-modern standpoint “A Story” can be called the proper story. Though loose, it has a plot. There are various characters who are both individuals as well as the type of their class.

The events and circumstances presented in the story bear a very close resemblance to life. It also conveys a moral lesson while entertaining the readers. The relationship between Mr. Thomas and his wife are realistically presented.

So, “A Story” is a good story from the modern and post-modern point of view though it might appear to be just jumble of people from a traditional point of view.

 

Source

https://thepronotes.com/a-story-summary-and-important-question-answer/

https://www.enotes.com/topics/story

https://tyrocity.com/topic/a-story/