Category: The Tower

“Fairy Tale” and “The Tower” Essay

Argue in an essay any(one) of these critical questions:

  • Compare ideas the authors suggest to you about the gender role of the protagonist?
  • How do various literary elements of each work – plot, character, point of view, setting, tone, diction, images, symbol, archetypes etc. – reinforce its meaning?
  • Compare how psychological matters such as repression, dreams, and desire are presented consciously or unconsciously by each author.
  • Compare what each author suggests about the relationships between men and women? Are these relationships sources of conflict? Do they provide resolutions to conflicts?
  • Compare how you felt when reading the last paragraph of each story. Explain what each story suggests to you about the nature of reality. Was Caroline’s descent beyond the 470th step “real”? Is the typewriter “real”? How are the Tower and Caresse’s “neat pile of typing paper” similar/different? What function do our memories serve in defining who we are? At the end, are Caroline and the “good woman” alive? Are they dead?
  • Compare what the authors are saying about boundaries. We discussed severally the boundary between the known and the unknown in the monomyth pattern.

“The Hobby” and “The Tower”

“After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn’t bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it’s a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it’s sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we’re doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.” – Paulo Coelho, The Witch Of Portobello

Compare what each author(Marghanita Laski and Eric McCormack) have to say about love?

or

How do we find the courage to be true to ourselves – even if we are unsure of who we are?

“The Tower” and “The Hobby” Essay

Argue in an essay any(one) of these critical questions:

  • Compare ideas the author’s suggest to you about the gender role of the protagonist?
  • How do various literary elements of each work – plot, character, point of view, setting, tone, diction, images, symbol, archetypes etc. – reinforce its meaning?
  • Compare how psychological matters such as repression, dreams, and desire are presented consciously or unconsciously by each author.
  • Compare what each author suggests about the relationships between men and women? Are these relationships sources of conflict? Do they provide resolutions to conflicts?
  • Compare how you felt when reading the last paragraph of each story. Explain what each story suggests to you about the nature of reality. Was Caroline’s descent beyond the 470th step “real”? Is the Old Man’s train “real”? How are the Tower and the Kitchener house similar/different? What function do our memories serve in defining who we are? At the end, are Caroline and the Old Man still alive? Are they dead?

“The Tower” by Marghanita Laski (England)

There is the known world; that is, the world we think we know, the world we perceive with our senses. And then there is the unknown, a world conceived, if at all, only by the mind. In this gap between the reach of our senses and the reach of our mind, arise all of our dreams and all of our nightmares. Does my family tree, my unusual name, my singular appearance, my sudden attraction to, or repulsion from, this person, object, or place mean that I am singled out for some specific fate? “Yes,” say the writers of fantasy: H. G. Wells, “The Green Door,” C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. And “yes,” too, say many of the writers of horror.

“The Tower” is based on two of these sources of horror: the sense that some people are fated for certain experiences, and the sense that some people—in certain places—can pass through doorways into other worlds or, as here, into the domain of another power.

But Laski makes her story different by eschewing the usual roller coaster of horror and maintaining the possibility of normalcy right up to the final words. How many more steps are there? Is there any end to this ghastly descent? Who or what is waiting for Caroline?

Marghanita Laski, 1915 – 1988

In her home country of England, Marghanita Laski was well known as a journalist, broadcaster, critic, and author.  She wrote in many genres, and received praise both for her fiction and for her works of biographical criticism:  the latter including Jane Austen and Her World, George Eliot and Her World,  and more recently, From Palm to Pine:  Rudyard Kipling Abroad and At Home.  Her novels show her equally at home with fantasy and science fiction in Love on the Supertax;  social satire in Toasted English;  terror in The Victorian Chaise-Longue; and humour in The Village.  Her most critically acclaimed work, Little Boy Lost, set in France after World War II, was adapted to film by Paramount in 1953, and starred Bing Crosby as the father searching for his missing son.

Exploring the Text

  1. While Caroline is in the tower she experiences many moments of terror.  Select the four sentences in the text which you feel are most effective in creating terror.  Discuss your findings with one other student.
  2. Analyze Caroline’s relationship with her husband.  Imagine that you are a marriage counsellor; what advice would you give Caroline? her husband?  Write a letter to one or the other of these two people suggesting how they might improve their relationship in some way that might make it more fulfilling for both.  Assume that Caroline did not visit the tower.
  3. Reread the descriptions of the paintings of Giovanna di Ferramano and the Unknown Gentleman.  Explain how what we learn from these descriptions and the description of the tower at the beginning of the story help to shape our understanding of what happens to Caroline in the tower.
  4. The art of writing a suspenseful story depends on knowing now only how much information to give the reader and where and when to give it, but also on how much to withhold.  With these considerations in mind, and referring to two specific passages, evaluate Laski’s success as a writer of suspenseful stories.

Personal Response

Respond to this story in your journal in any way you wish.  You may want to take some of the following suggestions into consideration.  Describe how you felt when you read the last paragraph of this story.  Does this story remind you of any other stories you know or any dreams you may have had?  Describe them.  Explain what these stories and/or dreams have in common.  Describe your first exposure to a horror story.  How would you rate your response to horror on a scale of one to ten, ten being severe?  Explain how you feel when you are experiencing horror and describe any effects or incidents that are particularly scary for you.  Share your ideas with other students.

Language

Combine the following groups of sentences by using “ing” words, conjunctions, parallel structure, or any other devices you wish.

    • Caroline spoke aloud
    • She spoke with explosive relief.
    • She stopped abruptly.
    • The steps stopped too.
    • She looked down.
    • She looked in the shaft of the tower.
    • She looked down to the narrow staircase.
    • The stair case was unprotected.
    • It was spiralling round and round.
    • The skin of her right hand was torn.
    • The skin was hot with blood.
    • She would never lift her hand from the wall.
    • She would force her rigid legs to move.

“The Sea Devil” and “The Tower” Essay

The man in The Sea Devil, and Caroline in The Tower, both begin adventures in the late afternoon or evening.  In one way or another both come up against an evil force that seems to be bent on their destruction.  Work with the two stories, analyse (a) the nature of this force, (b) the protagonist’s method for dealing with it, and (c) why the force did or did not triumph in the end.