The two last tuesday I worked with Maïlis and Marie Athenaïs on a Nadine Gordimer's short story about love and segregation. We first proposed definitions for some words talking about segregation and so on.

Apartheid : separation system between black and white people in the society of South Africa till the end of the 60's.

Privilege : superiority of a social class and its rights.

Deprivation : when the governement takes away lands, propriety ... to Black People.

Segregation : general word for "apartheid", separation between different people, ethnies, religions ...

Integration : opposite of segregation.

Taboo : a subject you mustn't talk about.

Prejudice : a premade idea of something.

Tolerance : accept all differences.

If you wanna feel a little bit in the segregation atmosphere ... Try to go in the this link :

After that, we read the story and found it so sad ... because segreagation ... because of the end.

Here a little book report about it.

Title : Country Lovers

Author : Nadin Gordimer

Publisher : not found, you can click here to read the whole story on the internet if you want to.

Date of publication : 1980

Setting : a farm in South Africa during Apartheid

Characters : Character's description : Thebedi, a black girl who works in a farm ; Paulus, a white man who is the farmer's son ; Njabulo, a black man who becomes Thebedi's husband and also work in the farm.

Summary of the plot and personnal opinion :

        Do you believe in a love that could overcome segregation ? If you want to find an answer, you should read this short story. The beginning is oh-so-beautiful, love overcomes segregation but will they keep overcoming it ?

        As we have already said, it's a romance between Thebedi and Paulus, that was supposed to stay hidden because of the Apartheid. They were friends when they were only children. Paulus talked about life in city and Thebedi was quietly listening, asking questions, learning how was the world around. And with adolescence came love ... Hidden love ... near the river-bed, meeting while the sun set ... However, one day a baby, beautiful, cute, but colored arrives and life changes ...

       Personnally, this story was a revelation, a punch in the face, a discovery of what segregation could do. It remembers me all problems we actually have between differents people, because of their color or their origin. That's why I found this short story effective cause actual ! However, I would have hoped that the end could be better. Yet, it's reality and one day you have to face it ! Moreover, the author's style is special. In fact, she uses many descriptions, which is not usual in a short story, whereas it wasn't a problem for me beaucse I found them such poetical.

I do recommand you this book because it's a really interesting short story that you will read fastly but intensivly ! It's concentration of emotions and reflexions which are not going to leave you the same as before the reading ... What is this awful end ? What is the baby's problem ? Don't be shy ! Face segregation !

Wednesday, 7th we had a test on a extract of the Fifth Child. It was quiet the end of the novel and we discovered how much the family suffers from Ben and his awful comportement.

So, tuesday 13th we corrected this test and learnt that Harriet and David will buy the house they wanted to have, smaler and more normal, and life could go on, as Ben has left his family.

Mrs Ricard lend me the novel so I'm about to read it during the hollidays because whereas I find the story difficult and sad, I'm touched by Harriet and wanna dicover she at all.

We also, thought about Harriet and David's love story which was wonderful at the beginning, with their will to be happy, to have a huge family in a isolated house ... And which finally turn dark because of the Fifth Child's birth. Moreover, although they tried to live far from the outside world, Ben's problems have brought the outside world in this heaven. In fact, the opposition between Harriet, who try to fight for her child though she doesn't really love him, and the rest of the family has brought difficulties in the family. Love ... is sometimes so much hard too keep alive ...

That's why, we said that sometimes these beautiful "love at first sight' we found in books is not as good as it seems to be. Now the question is : "If Romeo and Juliet had lived, do you think their love story would have ended as David and Harriet's one ?".

During the 2nd Hour, Maïlis made an oral presentation of Pride and Prejudice, an english novel written by Jane Austen. It's a special and complicated love story between so many persons. Indeed it talks about a family with five beautiful daughters who search true love ! Click here if you want to read a little summary of it :

We reacted on our probematic and said that it's not exactly a confrontation with the outside world because it's more a duel between the two lovers who don't seem to be made for each other. . Darcy is prideful and wealthier than Elisabeth who thinks she is not feet for him, which makes she having prejudices.

However, at the beginning, the problem is that lovers, whatever it's Jane and Bingley or Elisabeth and Darcy, are not from the same social class. Darcy is wealthier than Elisabeth who thinks she is not feet for him.

The family have decided to send Ben in an Institution ... Harriet don't know ... She asks everybody to find the place where her child could be !! Finally, someone tell her ... So she immediatly decide to go and save her son.

She arrives in a strange place, made in dark stone, during a rain day ... She is anxious and nobody comes to open the door, till a "slatterny girl" tries to repulse her. However Harriet enters the oppressive place and finds her son in an absotlutly obvious situation ...

If you wanna read her arriving to the Institution, click on the picture ...

If you wanna read what happen in the institute ...click here   and go to the page 4 of the document.

To begin, I invit you to read this summary of the story, not to be lost.

December, Tuesday 6th, we worked on a second extract of the story.

We had to do a webquest again. Here it is the answer of the questions.

The scene takes place around "the" big table, which the center of the house, in the dinning-room. The characters in this scene are Dorothy : Harriet's mother, Alix : Harriet's sister, and Harriet, David and Ben. It's the evening and they try to feed the baby. The main issue of the discussion is "What is he ?".

AT THE KITCHEN TABLE

In this part, Ben is the main character because he is the only child and he is the subject of the conversation. Moreover he is also the center of this conversation because "he emptied it [the baby bottle] in a moment and then roared", all adults are amazed, surprised and frightened, thinking Ben is different. So, "what is he?", but nobody knows, only the silence answers to that. In fact, while he is having his baby bottle Ben is like a beast, a monster : "knees up in his stomach", "clenched and enclenched", "roared", "supporting it with his to fists" ... To conclude, Ben is compared to a "Neanderthal baby", a prehistoric person from the era where human beings looked like animals.

  AT THE DOCTOR'S        

First, the doctor thinks Ben id brest-fed, but he's not. Moreover he is particularly impressed by harriet's bruised nipples and shocked by the important of the bruise. However he says nothing about Ben, he thinks about a baby blues from Harriet and tries to come her down saying the fact of not loving her baby is usual. In fact, the desperate mother calls her baby "the nasty little brute" and feels really guilty. The doctor tries to sofen her feelings saying it happens. Ben continues to surprise them, during the appointement, he tries to get himself on all fours.

Here, we discover a woman sensible although she doesn't like her baby, but who really try to love him and take care of him because she feels guilty.

BACK HOME

In the last passage, the atmosphere is joyful, there are children everywhere, playing around ... However, after meeting Ben, the family changes her way of live ... Before, all was normal, they had parties, came for summer ... Yet, the baby become the center of the attention and Paul will not be the happy baby he was ...

Tuesday, 29th we continued to study the Fifth Child, we had some comprehension questions.

Here, the answers. (go and read the script posted last time)

§1 : The main characters are shy, unfashionable, conservatives ...

Yet, they considered they are themselves, ordinary people. They don't need to change.

§2 : Elements evoking life in 60's are : "small band", "pounding rythm ... shook", "dressed up, dramatic, bizarre, full of colour", "noisy", "bobbing up and down on revolving" which refers to the born of rock.  It's the descrition of an extravagant society.

The narrator describe the scene as if he were at the party, the technique she use is a travelling of the scene, which is a technique from the cinema to reveal the scene porgressively. Then, she stops on Harriet and David and zooms on them.

Harriet and David had a negative opinion of the others, for them, they faces are "distorted", songs become "screams and grimaces", all is a "forced hecticity". They despise, or scorn, the others.

§3 : During Harriet's description, the narrator's tone is very ironic. He finishes it saying she is better "at home, in a garden", he compares her to a flower with her "flowery dress", but not a a beautiful one, a dry one, as the "case of dried grasses and leaves". Indeed, she looks like an "impressionist picture, or a trick photo", like something not good in a party. She is only here, but "merged in her surrounding". On the whole, she is compared to someone who is easily forgotten, nobody notices she.

§4 : In and after David's description we can find quotations that say they were bound to fall in love : "Both had found who the other was" with the repetition of "both" in many sentences, "she knew his look of watchful apartness mirrored her own" ... They understood each other at first sight.

§5-6 : We learn that David had "one long and difficult affair with a girl" and that he stayed "reluctantly" with that girl who was "all he did not want in a girl". Harriet is a virgin, and actually as David, doesn't like sleeping around. Both jock about the attraction between opposite. To summary, they are looking for true love and, according to them, it's difficult to find it in a party like that : They have an ideal vision of love.

§ 7 : This paragraph is a revolving passage ! In fact, the two lovers, stand at the same moment and leave quietly the party. They first go in an office, then in David's flat. There, they start talking, sometimes kissing and fall peacefully asleep, hand to hand, side to side. They have decided to get marry at spring ! "Why wait ?"

As Romeo and Juliet, and Maria and Tony, the main characters met at a party, fall in love at first sight, and are differents from the others and the outside world. "They were made for each other", that's why they decid to get marry !