“The Portrait”

Huxley’s message of this story is to not let others mock you, you should be well-educated and open-minded person, what should give a person independence and confidence. At the beginning of the story we see how easily Mr. Bigger sneers at frivolous and arrogant customer. He tells him obvious ironies, makes the Lord of the Manor dance after his pipe and disports himself with telling him a false story about the cheap picture looking like a piece of Venetian Masters of the 18th century. Another victim of Mr. Bigger is a poor young artist, who painted this picture. He is rather clever boy, but he is also as ingenuous as the customer is. Mr. Bigger sells his picture for such a high price, but gives him practically nothing for his work. From this story it is clear, that you should be smart and careful if you want to be prosperous. The main hero of the story is Mr. Bigger. It is an ingenious art-dealer who perfectly knows how to sell and what to sell. His main interest is money, what can be seen from his thoughts about the reason of his customer’s material welfare, asking a high price for the picture and his fraud at the artist. His name itself reflects his behavior towards the customer, showing us a person, who knows everything and who can give a proper advice. Mr. Bigger produces an impression of a reliable person and the customer easily falls for this impression.
The most interesting thing about this story is the dealer’s tactics, which shows us a brilliant psychological skill of Huxley to portrait the personages’ inner world and the process of communication sidewise. The story can be divided into several stages. First stage describes us how Mr. Bigger evaluates a customer from the first sight. The author inputs the dealer’s thoughts indirectly. The next step in Mr. Bigger’s strategy is an agreement to everything what the customer says, to make the Lord of the Manor feel what he wants – superiority. To produce such impression, Mr. Bigger uses flattering and tries to make the customer feel comfortable. The next stage is the penultimate episode of clearing all the consumer’s doubts. To achieve this goal, the dealer sublimates the consumer’s fine art instinct. In the last stage he led the consumer to the apogee of the despair, what is shown with the help of the phraseological unit “burst into tears”. Now Mr. Bigger wants to produce the opposite effect, conceding that the consumer is quite intelligenced in art. This is a flat flattering. But that helps the consumer to “feel himself on safer ground” and more important.
The Lord of the Manor wants a historical piece of art. And a sly art-dealer invents such story just on the fly, like a fairy-tale for children at night. He speaks very confident, calm, serious, on a low voice. All that makes an effect of the picture’s significance. He doesn’t hurry, making pauses to whiff to produce an impression of luxury and to make the consumer feel suspense, leading the consumer deeper and deeper in lies, love and history. The final stage is the purchase. After convincing the customer that this picture is exactly what he needs and that he has wonderful gift of “natural instinct”, tactical Mr. Bigger celebrated his triumph.This story is told in rather optimistic tone, with raft of ironical notes. But the thing which Huxley showed in the story is rather tragic. We see two awfully selfish people with money as the highest value. Nor customer, neither dealer has that special sense of art tingle as the real artist has when he makes an oeuvre. Both men are not sincere and conformable. They will never tell you if they are wrong. Because the superiority is put higher than the truth, humanism or the aesthetic sensitivity. Huxley always tried to criticize and ridicule such people and such society even in his very first essays. But it is very sad, that after reading this story people continue lying, pretending, playing a double game and making tricks and frauds at each other. This leads the society to degradation and makes people suffer. But who ever tried to listen to the poets or to the artists? We trust only to prophets and to politics allowing them to make us blind, not-available to think and analyze, to make serious decisions and actions stupid crowd.

The village school master

Goldsmith’s portrait of his former school master is a tour de force of depiction. He manages to make fun of the schoolmaster’s idiosyncrasies while maintaining reverence and admiration for him. The forte of the poem lies in the way in which Goldsmith has neither idealized nor trivialized the school master. On the other hand, the school master brush stroked to make him more humane.The village school master ran his little school in a small village. It was situated next to the irregular fence that fringed the village path with full blossomed, beautiful but ornamental furze. He was not only a very strict disciplinarian but also a ferocious person to observe. He was familiar to the poet and all other truants because they had endured the master’s rage. His face was a thing of careful scrutiny. The trembling pupils would gaze at his face to sense his present frame of mind. The day misfortunes were written on his forehead or in between the eyebrows.The school master was a contradiction. Although he was stern, he was kind and good-humored. He had a store of jokes. When he told them, the children burst out in fake laughter, under the pretext that the jokes were awfully hilarious. If the children observed a frown on his fore head, they circulated the gloomy news throughout the classroom in an undertone. But he was in essence a kind man. If at all he had any fault, it was his intense love for learning. He wanted his pupils to become genuine scholar and hence, he had to be demanding with them.The villagers were unanimous in their opinion that he really was an erudite man. He without doubt could write and also work out sums in arithmetic. He could also survey land, forecast weather and tides. Besides, he was able to measure the content of a vessel .The parson approved of his skill in debate. Even if defeated, the school master would keep on arguing. He would become more fervent and would fling booming words at his adversary. The uncomprehending villagers would be convinced that the school master was establish ing his standpoint very thoroughly. They stood round the two debaters and witnessed the verbal duel. They were awestruck when they heard the high-sounding and incomprehensible words used by the school master. They gawked at him and wondered how his small head could keep that enormous hoard of knowledge.
This poem is a simple vignette of a village school master. The school was in a small village at Lissoy, an Irish village where the poet himself had studied. Mr. Thomas Paddy Byrne was the village school master. This poem has become one of the classics of literature because of the ring of genuineness. As the poet himself was a pupil of this school master, he is able to create an authentic aura to the poem. With a fleeting allusion to the site, the poet starts to describe the man. The school master’s fluctuating moods, the situation in the class room and reactions of learner are described in this poem. It is amply obvious that Goldsmith looked upon the teacher with the mixed feelings of fear, respect and humour.The poet gives an amusing sketch of the teacher’s character with a deep sympathy for him. He analyses of the nature and capability of the school master. The teacher was a taskmaster who took his students to task if they played truant. The poet, as a student, was very aware of this facet of the school master but he valued his stand and came to love and respect him. The harsh steps taken by the teacher had a soft and virtuous purpose behind them as he wished to see his pupils turn in to learned people.The school master’s is recognized as a great scholarly person by the entire village and even the parson recognizes his skill in debate. The oratory of the teacher leaves the rustics gazing in admiration. The poem ends on a note of humour. The teacher is not to be taken as a sheer sardonic sketch. Besides, his academic affectations, he was remarkably kind and compassionate . The scowl on his face often masks a heart brimming with love and consideration. He has smattering of useful information which he puts to good use with the illiterate and ignorant villagers. Thus he creates a larger than life figure of himself before them. He has a view on every subject and loves to engage in debate above all with the village priest. He knows that in the eyes of the villagers the conclusion of the debate depends more on noise than on wisdom. Hence he keeps arguing even if he is defeated.