Did anyone read The Sojourner by Carson McCullers?

Answer 1

The extract I’m going to analyze is taken from “The sojourner”. The author Carson McCullers, the American novelist, short story writer was born in Columbus, a city in West Georgia, in 1917. She has maintained her reputation of a talented writer with her subsequent publications, the best know of which are the novel “The Member of the Wedding”. Her publications are not so numerous but she is recognized as a leading American writer. The title is the topical one, as it doesn’t foreshadow the content and the whole meaning of the title if fully determined only in retrospection after reading and analyzing the text information. There are some subtopics like “the relation between father & son”, “life & death”, “well-forgotten past returned”, “love”. The quote that suits here: “There’s nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.” The theme is easily understood from the plot and is connected with the message. The extract can be divided into : “Ferris in Paris at his father’s funerals”, “The address book”, “The impulsive desire to call the Ferris’s ex-wife”. It is the story about John Ferris who awoke in a New York hotel. He had the feeling that something unpleasant was waiting for him-what it was, he didn’t know. We get to know that Ferris had come from Paris to his father’s funeral which had taken place the week before in him home in Georgia. Ferris had love his father and the bond between them had once been extraordinary close. Then he took one address book to verify a number and turned the pages with growing attentiveness. This book made him think of the people’s life which had been in it. One of them married, the 2nd one was unheard of since, the 3rd one hit the skids after the war, the 4th died. And when our protagonist closed the address book, he suffered a sense of hazard, transience, almost of fear. Out of window he saw his ex-wife Elizabeth and here the wild quiver and sense of recklessness and grace had lingered in his mind. It was eight years Ferris had last seen his ex-wife. Now she has a husband and children. As we know he was with Jeannine. When he was about to go to Paris the impulsive decision to call his ex-wife have overtaken him. When he did, Elizabeth was glad to hear him & invited to visit her home. In my opinion, the gloomy atmosphere is present throughout the story. The feeling of dismay, dissatisfaction and discontent is felt too. The protagonist is Ferris in the text. I think he is described indirectly through his behavior, especially according to his deep thoughts we can say the Ferris was a kind of a lonely and dreamy person judging by the dreams he had : “The twilight border between sleep and waking was a Roman one this morning… in this semi-consciousness he sojourned again in Paris, or was German rubble, or Swiss skiing and a snow hotel. Sometimes also in a fallow Georgia field at hunting dawn. Rome it was this morning in the yearless region of dreams.” I think he was a father’s son because they were extraordinary close. Fater’s death had made him aware of youth already passed and the fact that “his hair was receding and the veins in his now naked temples were pulsing and prominent and his body was spare except for an incipient belly bulge”, proves that he was prone to the depression. His incertitude was shown by the author when he couldn’t find out whether he loved Jeannine or his ex-wife Elizabeth who described directly. She had a fair brown rolled hair and I can say with assurance she was a beautiful woman because when Ferris saw her he had a bodily disturbance and the loss of Elizabeth had destroyed him. The extract is heterogeneous as the events develop rapidly. It consist a piece of narration, description, inner speech and written in the style of fiction. The author is the omniscient, the 3rd person narration. The main events are in Paris according to the text. The exposition starts with Ferris’s dream as if he were in Roma and with his awakening in a NY hotel, with the feeling that something unpleasant was awaiting him. The plot develops with funerals of his father and with address book, which all lead to an unexpected climax when he saw his ex-wife Elizabeth and the feeling of hard heart stroke, that she aroused in him. And the denouement is represented us when John called to Elizabeth and she invited him for dinner. To convey the message and to draw the reader’s attention the author uses numerous SDs. Lexical: epithet, metaphor “the golden lavish city and age-stone”, “cloudless autumn day”, “yearless region of dreams”, “fair brown hair”, “the unhinged body”, “clouded heart”, “candid autumn day”, “wild quiver in his heart”. Syntactical: repetition “Sometimes… . Sometimes”, “Her fair brown hair…, and as he watched her… his father had remarked…had..”, par-l constr-n and inversion “She turned at the next corner and Ferris followed, although by now his intention to overtake her had disappeared.” “Ferris… that the sight of Elizabeth aroused in him, the dampness of his hands, the hard heart-strokes”. “he had loved again, and then again”. Simile “as long as”, “like an exhausted man”. Ineer speech: “he would say, I happened to run into my ex-wife when I was in NY. I had a dinner with her. And her husband, of course…”. The authors style is monotonous and at the same time she brakes it by the choice of words and SDs. She uses also Americanisms like: “hit the skids”. The manner of treating to her characters is not ironic. The use of alliteration and the sound imitative words help to affect the reader’s hearing. As the end isn’t given in the extract we can only guess it. I think this story has resemblance to the previous ones we have read that correlated with time. May be our hero spent a lot of time in dreaming about Rome, Swiss and his in a some way helped him to take decisions in life with his aid. But father’s death had made John to think over his life seriously. I think the sojourner was John Ferris that means a person that stays only temporary. This is the mode of life that he choice. The address book had played a great part too

Answer 2

Yes, The Sojourner by Carson McCullers is a novel that has been read by many readers since its publication in 1953. It is a part of McCullers' body of work that explores themes of loneliness, empathy, and human connection.