Unit Six The Telephone

Period 5-6: Text comprehension

1. Theme: 1) The text describes, from a boy's perspective, how the telephone affected people's way of life in a Lebanese mountain village: It broke the seclusion of the village. 2) The text raised us a question: what attitude we should adopt toward new things, whether we should welcome them or boycott them.

2. Structure:

I. Lifein the village before it had a telephone (paras. 1-10)

A. How the villagekept track of time in the past (paras. 1- 8)

B. What happened inthe year of the drought (paras. 9- 10)

II. The installation of the first telephone in the village (paras. 11-18)

A. How the villagers came to decide to have a telephone (para. 11)

B. What sensationand curiosity the installation created (paras. 12- 18)

III. Effects of the telephone on the life of the villagers (paras. 19-25)

A. How the village center shifted (paras. 19- 22)

B. How and why a lotof people left the village (paras. 23- 25)

 

3. Comprehension questions

Part I (1-10): village life before theinstallation

1)    What wasthe overall picture of Magdaluna? How did the narrator present the picture?

      from its geographical location; (Para. 1)

      from the detailed description; (Paras. 1—3)

      from the carefully-chosen words

2)    What did time mean to the villagers? How did they keep track of time? What did it suggest?

      Time didn't mean much to anybody in the secluded village.

      The villagers used a divine calendar to keep track of time.

→the unchanging cycle of life; a traditional, agriculturalsociety; not industrialized countryside. Everything is slow and there is noneed to hurry.

3)    What was the general life pattern for the villagers?

4)    And what were considered important events?

(birth, marriage, death), natural disasters like earthquakes,droughts, floods, locusts, and pestilences

5)    Why did the narrator say that the year of drought was one of his best years?

Arguments escalated into full-blown,knockdown-dragout fights for water. …

6)    Do the boy's memories of that year reveal anything important? What's that?

7)    What was the image of the village women? Does it fit into the woman images of oursociety?

8)    What does this part tell us about the local life?

Tasks:

  Findevidence in this part suggesting the villagers had a monotonous life.

  Findevidence in this part suggesting the villagers had a hard life.

  Find outthe expressions bearing a strong local flavor.

  Find thefigures of speech in this part.

 

Part II(Para.11-25): changes brought by the telephone

1) Whatwas the villagers’ response to the installation of telephone?

2) Whatdid the villagers think of the telephone men? How did the villagers have suchan impression?

3) Howdifferent were their positions when they came to observe the process? What doesthis suggest? (para.13)

4) What are ImKaleem’s features?? Why she was attractive to those men? (para.19-20)

      Appearance: short, middle-aged, jet-black hair

      Voice: raspy, loud (exaggeration: unpleasant)

      Identity: widow, devout Catholic, village whore (what's special about her being a whore?)

    character:generous, understanding, and sensible

    Function: burden-reliever for women, confessor and troubleshooter for men, her place as one of comfort and entertainment

5) What changes happened after the telephone's arrival?

Changes in the village (Paras. 19-25)

	Before	After	Implication
village center	Im Kaleem’s house	Abu Raja’s dikkan	father—mother
activities	Argue about  politics, drink coffee, play cards or backgammon	Exchange rumor,  glance at the phone, drink Kacula,…	home—abroad
general   Atmosphere	Bustling at any  time of day, island of comfort, an oasis	Laughter, noise  trailed off, stopped… ; a skeleton	Life—death
for me	Lucrative  business, Run errands to make money	Fewer and fewer  men came to Im kaleem’s	?

6) What do you think is the narrator's feeling toward the changes? Find evidence to illustrate your points.

 4. Language and style

This story deserves our close attention particularly on the following points:

a. The author's careful and clever choice of examples for bringing out his key ideas

b. The clever way of hiding significant messages in a seemingly childish narration

c. Humors

d. Figurative language/ Figures of speech

      metaphor, simile, paradox, exaggeration…

e. A strong local color

   We knew what to do and when to do it, just as the Iraqi geese knew when to fly north, driven by the hot wind that blew in from the desert. (Para. 1)

   I wriggled my way through the dense forest of legs to get a firsthand look at the action. (Para. 1)

   Her house was an island of comfort, an oasis for the weary village men, exhausted from having so little to do. (Para. 1)

   … they were ready to toss back and forth, like a ball, the latest rumors goingaround the village. (Para.1)

   Magdalunaba came a skeleton of its former self, desolate and forsaken, like the tombs, a place to get away from. (Para. 1)

   … the two important-looking men from the telephone company, who proceeded with utmostgravity, like priests at communion, to wire up the telephone. (Para. 13)

   At AbuRaja's dikkan, the calls did eventually come, as expected, and men and women started leaving the village the way a hail storm begins: first one, then two, then bunches. (para. 23)

f. Descriptive language (words and sentencestructuresto describe a traditional society and life where things happen withoutany change)

      … and … and … and …

      choice of “the” before names: Everyone knew everyoneelse.

 

5. Discussion

Work in groups of four/ five, and share your understanding of the text.

1) What would be the key words if you want to discuss its theme?

Ø technology, progress, globalization?

Ø a better life?

2) Is the telephone a blessing or a curse? A blessing in disguise? A necessary evil? Are the changes all negative? How do you understand these changes?

3) Should we alwaysembrace the new because what is new means progress? How do you understand“Progress”?