Exercise 2. Label the passages given below as to their story type

Label the passages given below as to their story type. Give your reasoning.

a) Before I tell you anything about myself, I would like to tell you, or at least identify for you, the world into which I was born. My background. I mean of course my mother — my father. My two parents. Mother died when I was forty-odd. Dad died when I was fifty-odd. Thus I had them as my…Well, they were always, for over forty years — there. They were mine. (Katharine Hepburn, Me)

b) For a humorist I think a lot about death… My main concern about my death was that I would not make The New York Times obituary page. I was sure it would be just my luck that Charles de Gaulle would die on the same day and all the space would be taken up with tributes to him. The New York Times is the only institution which has the power to decide if you existed or not. You can spend eighty years on earth and if they don’t say anything about it when you pass away, your life has been a waste. (Art Buchwald, Leaving Home)

c) He would remember her joyous laughter for the rest of his life. Max could still see Cleo clearly in his mind, shimmering first with passion and then with delight. And he was responsible for giving her both... Max savored the unfamiliar pleasure that coursed through him… He was not accustomed to being viewed as a man who could make someone else happy. He certainly had never seen himself in such a light. But last night he, Max Fortune, had made Cleo Robbins happy. She said she had waited all her life for the right man, for him, and she claimed she had not been disappointed. Last night, for the first time in his entire life, he, Max Fortune, had been someone’s Mr. Right. (Jayne Ann Krentz, Grand Passion)

d) The rat jumped down and trotted off toward the elbow-bend further up. Hank’s hand was trembling now, and the flashing beam slipped jerkily from place to place, now picking out a dusty barrel, now a decades-old bureau that had been loaded down here, now a stack of old newspapers, now — He jerked the flashlight beam back toward the newspapers and sucked in breath as the light fell on something to the left side of him. A shirt… was that a shirt? Bundled up like an old rag. Something behind it that might have been blue jeans. And something that looked like… Something snapped behind him. He panicked, threw the keys wildly on the table, and turned away shambling into a run. As he passed the box, he saw what made the noise. (Stephen King, Salem’s Lot)

e) Theodore Roosevelt welcomed Blaise heartily into his railroad car, a somewhat shabby affair for the governor of so great a state… “Delighted you could come!” For once Roosevelt did not make two or three words of delighted. He seemed uncharacteristically subdued, even nervous. With a sudden shake, the train started. Blaise and Roosevelt fell together against Senator Platt’s chair. From the chair came a soft cry. Blaise looked down and saw two accusing eyes set in a livid face, glaring up at them. “Senator, forgive me — us. The train…”. Roosevelt stuttered apologies. (GoreVidal, Empire)

f) The old man filled the cups, then leaned back in the booth and looked at Mike… “Never told my story to anybody. Never felt no call to, an’ didn’t want to be called a liar. Folks always figured I’d struck me a pocket, an’ I surely did”. He chuckled. “Only it weren’t raw gold but ree-fined gold. Pure! I found some all right an’ there’s aplenty where it came from if’n you aren’t skeered of ha’nts and the like… That there desert now, them mountains around Navajo an’ east of there… That’s wild country, boy! There’s places yonder you see one time an’ they never look the same again. There’s canyons no man has seen the end of nor ever will, either…” (Louis L’Amour, The Haunted Mesa)

g) The last question was asked for the first time… on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way: Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking face — miles and miles of face — of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole. (Isaac Asimov, The Last Question)

h) It was a warm day, almost at the end of March, and I stood outside the barber shop looking up at the jutting neon sign of a second floor dine and dice emporium called Florian’s. A man was looking up at the sign too. He was looking up at the dusty windows with a sort of ecstatic fixity of expression, like a hunky immigrant catching his first sight of the Statue of Liberty. He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck. He was about ten feet away from me. His arms hung loose at his sides and a forgotten cigar smoked behind his enormous fingers… He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food. (Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely)

i) Ryan had been to the office of the Central intelligence several times before to deliver briefings and occasional messages… Greer waved Ryan over and passed him a folder. The folder was made of red plastic and had a snap closure. Its edges were bordered with white tape and the cover had a simple white paper label bearing the legends EYES ONLY and WILLOW. Neither notation was unusual. Ryan opened the folder and looked first at the index sheet. Evidently there were only three copies of the WILLOW document, each initialed by its owner. A CIA document with only three copies was unusual enough that Ryan, whose highest clearance was NEBULA, had never encountered one. (Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October)

SUMMARY MAKING RULES

Summary is a clear concise orderly retelling of the contents of a story and is generally no more than 10 sentences.

To write a good summary follow these directions:

· Read the text carefully. Divide it into logical parts. Sum up each part in 1-2 sentences.

· Pay special attention to the structure of the plot. Concentrate on the most relevant turns of the events and the most important facts. Avoid minor details and repetitions.

· Change direct narration into indirect.

· Use your own words instead of words used by the author. Do not give quotations.

· Avoid figurative language, try to make it as neutral as possible.

· Stick either to the Past or the Present Tenses.

· Avoid expressing your own judgements, opinions, interpretation or appreciation.

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