Telling tales quotes

A puff of vapour would rise from his lips like the smoke from a muffled pistol

• Simile - the pistol suggests sudden violence, a sudden shift, which is what happens when Ralph is introduced to the family around this time.

• The ‘puff of vapour’ symbolises real chemistry and the chemistry of the family changing. This also relates to when the grandfather says that ‘chemistry is the science of change’, directly suggesting and foreshadowing the change that is to occur

• ‘Muffled pistol’ - suggests crime/hidden crime, as well as the grandfather being silenced by the end of the story.

‘She looked trapped and helpless’, ‘he looked like some torpid, captive animal

simile to describe the grandfather as an animal, as well as both the mother and grandfather being held captive - they are losing their control.

-Suggests an unhealthy relationship dynamic between the mother and ralph - in what should be a loving relationship she is scared - and needing to drink alcohol. the alcohol makes her ‘ soft and heavy and blurred’ - polysynthetic listing is used to demonstrate how strongly the boy feels that his mother is trapped, and being taken away.

alcohol - another example of chemistry - necessary in their relationship - makes Ralph gain authority

It causes Ralph to be seen in a much more negative light - possibly a biased narrator as the Mother is agreeing to drinking - although she is weak and grieving so potentially being taken advantage of

‘it would’ve been pointless to kill him - as death is a deceptive business’

the theme of death is constantly present throughout the story - whether about his father, grandmother, grandfather or ideas of causing death.

• since death is a deceptive business - the tone and comment shows wisdom of the son as an older man looking back and thinking about the death of his grandfather.

‘It was her. She made a hole in the bottom of the boat, not big enough to notice.’ ‘Don’t you believe me? Don’t you believe me? Don’t you believe me?

When the boys father appears in his room he says this.

The boy subconsciously blames his mother for the boat sinking, which is a metaphor used throughout the story to represent the family. The boy blames his mother for bringing Ralph (the hole that sank the boat) into the family.

Repetition is used to build tension and drama, evoking a sense of panic.

As well, the boy has to choose between two family members - his mother and father choosing who to believe, representing in the story how he must choose between his mother and his grandfather when they begin to drift apart.

‘But all the things that should’ve been explained - or confessed - she never did explain’

• from the perspective of the boy as an adult.

• throughout his life he has blamed his mother and Ralph. he does not see what happened as an accident

• the word ‘confessed’ connotes guilt.

• throughout the boys life, he has blamed his mother and ralph

his acid marked hands would reach out to receive it

• the boy still finds comfort in his grandfather - he sees him as his only person left after his mother chose ralph.

‘shuffled back to the house and slipped in like a stray cat’

comparing the grandfather to a stray cat represents his position in the family - simile

he was once at the top of the family, but his position has been usurped by ralph and he has lost all power, even feeling the need to sneak around like a stray cat in his own home because his family has made him feel so unwelcome.

‘slipped in’ suggests without notice, and that maybe he fears his family now.

‘shuffled’ - suggests It's as if all his energy and confidence have drained away

Comparing him to a "stray cat" suggests he is homeless and unwanted within his own family. It shows he has lost his power and position in the house to the new boyfriend, Ralph.

‘you don’t make things in chemistry, you change them’

the people are the same, but the chemistry between them has changed everything.

he is watching an experiment happen between him and his family - makes his situation feel even more tragic - evoking pathos.

he understands the rules of change - yet he has absolutely no control over the change in his family. he can see the outcome of this experiment, but there is nothing he can do about it - this is deeply saddening for him which leads him to his suicide.

he sees what is happening as a natural, unstoppable process, like a chemical reaction. he knows that he cannot do anything to stop it, which slowly diminishes all hope he has left - resulting in him feeling like he has nothing to lose and must now commit.

Grandfather uses chemistry to explain why life is out of control. He feels helpless about his daughter's new relationship. He cannot "make" a new situation, so he just watches the old one "change".

key themes

class identity, self worth, boundaries (social, political, psychological), visibility,

‘I wear a uniform, blue overall and white cap with the school logo on it. Part-time catering staff, that’s me.

• Listing / Tone.

• Analysis: Carla defines herself by her work uniform. Her tone suggests she feels inferior to the teachers she works with, accepting that she has a lower status.

• She sees herself as just a collection of parts, a 'worthless list', there to serve a function.

• Carla defines herself by her job, listing her uniform parts like a checklist ('blue overall and white cap').

  This suggests she feels reduced to a function rather than a person.

  The final phrase, 'that's me,' sounds like resignation, showing she has accepted this low-status identity and hidden her true Polish identity away. it isn’t a statement of pride.

• the idea of unform - limits individuality - unlike the funky ties - loss of identity, hierarchy, teachers are allowed to wear their own clothes but she is restricted due to her job and status - makes her feel worthless.

I’m half Polish. They don’t know that here.

She speaks in short sentences, as if in a secretive way.

• She has no sense of belonging.

• Her internal identity is suppressed/hidden, she feels invisible.

• Uses simple language, no exaggeration, like a confession.

• ‘They’ is very vague, she doesn’t know them and they don’t know her.

I didn’t write anything about my job. Let him think what he wanted to think. I wasn’t lying

She fears his judgement because judgement is what she is used to.

• Shame is from perception of her job - she perceives her job and therefore herself as low status, in the background.

• She is protecting herself from judgement - she has the moral obligation not to lie but she is still being deceptive.

• raises tension for when they finally meet.

‘then it sang and sang until it died’

• Technique: Metaphor.

• Analysis: The bird represents beauty trapped in a harsh place. This mirrors Carla's Polish identity, which she has hidden away (suppressed) for years until she writes to Stefan.

‘send me the polish, just so I can see it.

• she justifies herself wanting to see the Polish because she does not feel worthy or ‘polish enough’ to be allowed to read it properly.

• she feels disconnected from her culture as she tries to fit in with English standards, but she also feels disconnected from English standards resulting in her feeling completely isolated.

a family supper ideas

unreliable narrator, clinical tone - builds tension immediately, opening introduces themes of death, regret and guilt. Japanese culture - war efforts, honour, familial expectations

"It’s my belief that your mother's death was no accident." (The Father)

• Technique: Euphemism (saying something indirectly).

• Analysis: The father hints at suicide without saying the word. This creates tension and guilt, implying that the narrator leaving the family caused his mother's unhappiness.

• creates an ambiguous atmosphere.

• In A Family Supper, the father uses the euphemism 'no accident' to suggest the mother's death was a suicide.

  This indirect language creates a tense and ambiguous atmosphere, hinting at unspoken cultural feelings of shame and dishonour.

  By leaving the truth uncertain, the writer, Ishiguro, traps the characters and the reader in a state of suspicion.

  This prevents the family from communicating openly, highlighting the deep emotional distance between them.

my father was a formidable-looking man with a large stony jaw and furious black eyebrows

• tricolon of intimidating features - shows that the protagonist is slightly scared of his father,

• personifying his eyebrows to be furious shows that even such a small part of the face is filled with rage, exemplifying just the huge level of anger in this man.

• formidable suggests he is scary and intimidating.

• stones are hard and have no feeling, suggesting the father is emotionless, however this is contrasted by his furious eyebrows - this shows that he has a lot going on on the inside, but because of his loyalty to his cultural beliefs and standards, he supresses these emotions to the point they can only be released from something so minor on his face.

‘these gunboats here could’ve been better glued, don’t you think’

• metaphor representing himself and his family. the gunboats represent the son, and the glue represents him staying with his family and his culture, which is what his Father wishes could’ve happened as he is a man of principle and loyalty to Japanese culture.

• (relates to bonds in chemistry)

• it shows the fathers regret in not having tried harder to keep his son with him and to keep his family together after he lost his wife.

‘we fell silent once more’

• said at the very end.

• shows restriction and barriers between speaking and conversing freely with his family

• they are trying to disregard the topic of the mothers death.

• ‘silent’ is very ambiguous, and tension is very high due to the meal they are eating being hinted to be the Fugu fish that killed their mother, the reader is unsure of what is happening but there is a sense of ambiguity that evokes worry and concern for the reader.

invisible mass of the back row

• change

• coming of age

• rebellion - fake narratives about culture

• changing familial relationships

• taught about Christopher Columbus being the first European to reach Jamaica.

• broken into short sentences - pressured not to say too much, not fluent, tension building, uncomfortable episodic memories,

• fake narrative about culture.

• Claudette Williams was born and raised in Jamaica which is where the story is set, her parents migrated to England.

Invisible mass of the back row

• see through, unimportant, inconspicuous, forgotten, substance, weight, heavy, force, collective mass itself, individuals clumped together, weight - dragging down

my days of being hidden, disposed of, dispatched to the invisibility of the back row are numbered.

• tricolon of descriptors about being rid of.

• ‘are numbered’ - evokes a sense of hope - she will get away from the back row.

• she is going to gain her own sense of individuality and get away from this belief that she can just be clumped in with other people society deemed to be of less worth in those times.

‘My belly aches, I am petrified’

• her mental worry and anxiety now is having physical effects on her.

• visceral statement displays her panic as she is called upon.

• Hortense's 'belly ache' is more than just a physical pain; it's a physical reaction to the history she is being taught.

  The lessons, which focus on figures like Columbus from a European perspective, literally make her feel sick because they ignore and devalue her own Jamaican identity and history.

The Inspector's eyes pierce me through. They demand a response.

• Metaphor.

• Analysis: The "piercing" eyes show how intimidating and controlling the authority figure is. The students are not allowed to think for themselves; they must just give the "correct" response.

• It's an education system based on control, not on curiosity.

  The students aren't being invited to learn; they're being forced to obey.

  The narrator's description of the Inspector's eyes that 'pierce me through' uses a violent metaphor to show the oppressive nature of the colonial education system.

  The word 'pierce' suggests a physical attack, like being stabbed with a knife, which shows the immense power and control the Inspector holds over the students.

  This creates a climate of fear where students are too intimidated to think for themselves.

  Instead of offering their own thoughts, they feel forced to provide the 'correct' response to stop the 'attack'.

  This dictatorial style of teaching mirrors the wider power dynamic of colonialism, where the Jamaican students' own identities and ideas are suppressed in favour of the controlling European perspective.

english cold, english ice. frozen faces, frozen information, frozen places.

• critique of Eurocentric schooling, shows English rigidity.

• syntactically, lines are choppy, words emitted from her mind, her resistance to her lessons

• parts of the curriculum are held back, frozen, information about columbus is withheld.

• frozen suggests a cruelness, she sees England as freezing temperature wise, but also freezing in the sense that the societal educational expectations do not teach about her history, they only teach what makes them look good.

‘I can feel the others in the back row feeling proud’

• now she describes them as a mass being the back row, but it is no longer a bad thing that they are all together, now they are a strong group of people, they are no longer invisible

• ‘feel’ shows a sense of connection in their pride.

• the back row - exclusion, marginalisation, unseen, unheard.

• not just a physical place to sit, social, psychological condemning

• colonialism, racism, margin that people are pushed back to, even in education which should uplift.

• macrocosm - society shoving certain people into a more demeaning position

• mass - far from being a human being

• mass - weighing, feels like a burden

chemistry - ghosts

• Short sentences/phrases to dramatize situation, creating stark contrasts to previous events.

• He introduces him as a bold, ominous and frightening figure, who came to share the truth.

• The narrator describes him vividly, as if he was really there and it was not just his imagination.

• He appears in a dream, linking to his subconsciousness.

• The narrator is grieving and longing for his father so the ghost could be a psychological projection

• 'he was sitting there, just as he used to' - normalising ghost.

• Ghost is comfortable, seems usual.

• Narrator is longing for his father

• 'he looked as he always had, not older, not changed'

• Frozen in time, memory is preserving the lasts bits of him

• Incapability to accept death and not being stuck in the past

• 'his face was pale, but it was still his face'

• Pale - ghostly, his father was not really there.

• Clings to the fact it looks like him

• 'his eyes were on me, calm and steady'

• Eyes - deep understanding, comforting

• 'his clothes were the same as before - his jacket, his tie'

• Won't accept change

• Vivid memory, savours last memories.

 

• Grandfather could be living on in the narrators memory. Similarly to his father, they both live in his head, showing how death and grief dominate his life.

 

dynamic changes in chemistry

The dynamics often change

• Initially are strong - specifically during their one year of tranquility after the father's death

• After the boat sinks and Ralph joins the family, the dynamics swiftly change and their relationships become weaker

 

At the beginning the power is equally distributed, with the grandpa holding a little more, but once Ralph joins the family, the power is usurped by him as he criticizes grandfather whilst manipulating the mother.

 

The opening is calm, and the introduction of the boat ride presents the Grandfather as the stabilizing figure who cares for and spends time with his family. Ralph is introduced after the initial equilibrium showing how he disrupts the family's calm dynamic. Ralph is loud and aggressive, a foil to how g

grandfather is portrayed.

Swift uses meals as a structural marker, in which he displays the brutality of Ralphs eating habits, which mirrors his brash character. This also emphasizes the vast power imbalance which has occurred between Ralph and Grandfather, where Ralph usurped all of grandfathers gentle control.

significance of pond - chemistry

1. Introduced at the start - setting the scene

2. When boat sinks - sets the mood of the story, introduces the metaphor of the boat.

3. When son is reminiscing his calm life and then goes back to the boat sinking that day at the pond - gives a stark contrast.

4. When his father said that his mother made the hole in the boat - blaming the mother for the family falling apart

5. When he throws acid in the pond - shows how the son turns to the pond for help, reliability of the pond.

6. Full circle moment at the end when he returns to the pond and says he saw his grandfather.- Pond provides hope and comfort.

Chemistry vs a family supper

Chemistry

• Childhood narrative - equipment to cope isn’t provided: what happens there

• Inter/intra generational relationships

• How we have to work to compromise

• Being expected to keep quiet and accept a huge change in family dynamics: benefits of therapeutic conversation

• Bonds: chemical bonds as a metaphor for emotional bonds - 'cannot be broken'

• Conversations around grief - distorting innocence if there is no reliable leadership

• Suicide is treated as taboo around children, not spoken about.

• Gender roles, patriarchy, ideologies - mother lacking in power

 

A family supper

• Gender roles

• Generational roles

• Older generations not complying, not what they are used to

• America and Japan

• After WW2, America replaced a lot of the Japanese power

• Ishiguro talks about our preconceptions of Japanese culture - how we expect quite, reserved, ritualistic culture - a trick that plays on our preconceptions

• At the same time, there is a lot of ritual in the story that reflects ritualised aspects of Japanese culture

• Patriarchy, silencing of women

• Honor surrounding death

• Bushido, seppuku, kamikaze

• Cannot assume the Father is a bad person from just the perspective of the narrator

• Migration, effects of moving country, moving from family and the impacts that has on relationships