What an extraordinary night!

Comprehension:

•1)  Clarissa is told of Septimu's death and imagines him throwing himself from a window.

•2)  She reflects on life and death;

•3)  She contrasts her easy and successful life with the death and suffering of other people;

•4)  She imagines the meeting between Septimus and Sir William Bradshaw;

•5)  She thinks of her happiness at Bourton and of the pleasure one derives from the activities of day to day life;

•6)  She thinks life can be difficult, but she has the support of her husband;

•7)  She walks to the window;

•8)  She parts the curtains and sees the old lady looking at her;

•9)  The sky is not as Clarissa had imagined it;

10)  She watches the old lady going to bed;

11)  She thinks of Septimus again but does not pity him;

12)  She decides to go back to her party.

Interpretation:

•1)  What is Clarissa's first reaction to Septimus's death?

She is irritated by the fact the Bradshaws talk of death at her party. Her first reaction is of going in a next room to think how Septimus had thrown himself from a window.

•2)  What is her view on death?

She thinks as death as a defiance, an attempt to communicate.

•3)  What is Clarissa's view of Sir Bradshaw?

She thinks Sir William Bradshaw is a great doctor, without sex or lust, extremely polite to women, but capable of some indescribable outrage.

•4)  What struggle characterises Clarissa's life?

Her struggle is that she wanted success, and she thinks she has never been at the right position in the right moment.

•5)  In the last paragraph Clarissa is at the centre of the contrast between her social life and the world outside. Then suddenly a new thought comes to her and she experiences a "moment of being". What does she suddenly realize?

She suddenly realises that she felt somehow very like him, the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it.

•6)  Can you link the two quotations from Shakespeare to Clarissa's moods?

"If it were now to die, ‘twere now to be most happy": Clarissa feels so happy that it would be the perfect moment to die.

"Fear no more the heat of the sun" : Clarissa feels sad and she finally realises that Septimus's death is not something very important and so life has to go on.

•7)  Focus on the language. Can you explain why many sentences are "loosely constructed", with lots of repetitions and conjunctions?

I think that many sentences are "loosely constructed" with lots of repetitions and conjunctions to create in the reader the same sense of agony that Clarissa has.