14 (Топики по Английскому языку для англ.шк. (10 класс))

Topic 14

WILLIAM SAROYAN.

William Saroyan is an American writer of American origin. He gained his popularity in the thirties as a short-story writer. The long list of Saroyan’s collections of short stories opens with “The Young man on a Flying Trapeze”. He is also known as a talented dramatist, the best of his plays being “The Time of Your Life”. He is the author of a number of novels. His first novel, “The Human Comedy”, combined his talent of the storyteller with that of a dramatist.

Saroyan’s works are highly democratic, they are marked by deep belief in human kindness and the power of humor. To him the kind heart and humor are instruments of helping people in overcoming hardships and in resisting evil.

Saroyan’s characters are mostly common people, poor, noble, and full of humor. His is at his best, however with characters of children and such grown-ups who remain children, preserving their sincerity and sensitivity. No wonder that his manner of writing is characterized by the sincerity of intonation and. His language is both lucid and colorful. Saroyan makes the reader see the world through the eyes of his characters, keeping himself in the background, His humor is mostly mild, sometimes bitter, and more often than no eccentric.

Realistic and democratic at bottom, Saroyan’s works are not devoid of drawbacks and certain limitations. His firm belief in human kindness makes him resist the seamy side of life, its violence and cruelty. Though being a realist, he can’t help exposing it from time to time. But that is always accompanied by the soothing tone and reassuring smile suggesting that in spite of the hardships life will change for the better . Thus his kindness borders on sentimentality.

“The Human Comedy” came out in 1943. It’s a rare case of the adaptation of a move scenario into a novel. Both the movie and the novel were a great success. It reminds us of Saroyan’s short story collections, each chapter forming an episode which can be arranged into a story. The novel is set in California in a small provincial town of Ithaca during World War Second. The plot is centered round the Macauley family, whose eldest son is at war, the youngest, Ulysses, is only four, Homer is 14. Their mother is a widow of two years. The novel is to some extent autobiographical; Saroyan, as well as Homer Macauley, had to earn his living from an early age and had a lot of after school jobs, one of them that of a telegraph messenger. The job was not a casual choice of the writer. It linked Homer with a lot of people and with their fates, and constantly reminded was a war going on.

The title of the novel is suggestive . It implies that in spite of war and evil, life is going on and will finally win, for the world is full of clever, noble, stoical people, possessing the sense of humor, too.