THE STARTING POINT. “I got the idea for ‘The Strange-Looking Man,’”
says Mrs. Costello, “from reading of the homecoming of a Canadian
soldier, limbless, partially blind, wholly demented, to his young
wife--Homebringing, I should have said. As I read, I simply _saw_ the
story as it was written, nor could I help feeling as I wrote that my
little boy symbolized Germany as she is and my young man life, as we
are now so strongly hoping it may come to be.”
The statement from the author serves, also, to explain her symbolical
treatment.
SETTING. Should you judge, from the connotation, that the time is the
near or far future? What is the place? How is it indicated?
ACTION. Brief; it begins “One morning,” page 363, and ends with the
final words, page 364. Do you foresee the dénouement?
The narrative is remarkable in that it supposes a condition the
reverse, in many respects, of life in ante bellum days. The _child_
rocks his _father’s_ cradle. He is frightened by a whole man. The
wrecks of men, in the pictured setting, contrast sharply with the
traveler, pages 363, 364.
THEME. State the underlying idea, and show how it is intensified by
subsidiary ideas.