COMPREHENSION

1. The speaker is an Indian emigrant living in England, while his family settled in Pakistan against his will.
2. His theory regards the resentments migrants induce by “conquering the force of gravity”.
3. He compares gravity to belonging: it is a metaphor to explain the phenomenon of migration.
4. He thinks roots are “a conservative myth, designed to keep us in our places”.
5. In the passage two ways of looking for freedom are expressed: “to fly and to flee”. They are associated with the word “flight”, whose meaning stands for “running away” as well as “to fly like birds”.
6. He supposes ICI, Ciba-Geigy, Pfizer, Roche or NASA would create an anti-gravity pill.
7. As consequences of the anti-gravity pill, airlines would go broke overnight, pill-poppers would sank into the clouds and once the effects are over, people would land in different places of the earth.
8. It could be necessary to create pills of different strengths for journeys of different length and directional booster-engine in back-pack form.
9. Gravity could be identified with roots: by beating them, people would be free to migrate, so an hypothetical anti-gravity pill would make everyone a migrant.
10. The best thing about migrant people is their hopefulness, while the worst one is “the emptiness of one’s luggage”: they do not just come unstuck from a land, they leave behind memories.

ANALYSIS

2) The speaker is both an emigrant and a newcomer: once he left his motherland, he went to England, while his family moved to Pakistan.

3) The whole text is built on the metaphor of gravity: it is a means used to analyse the phenomenon of migration. Roots are another important symbol strictly related with gravity, since they keep people with their feet on the ground.

4) Gravity and belonging roughly express the same significance. They are not completely understandable, since their origins are unknown, but they are part of our existence, something we accept without questioning.

5) The speaker plays with several words from the scientific world, as well as air. For instance his lexical choices include “pills”,  “gravity”, “flying”, “planetary”, “clouds”... They all evoke concrete images and meaning.

6) Jonathan Swift’s description is pretty accurate, since he describes every object owned by the “Man-Mountain”, making suppositions about its function. The Man-Mountain is actually an emigrant, a foreigner, and the narrative voice well expresses the curiosity he induces. What seems to be important is not where he comes from, but his odd appearance and his things: as a matter of fact, the whole text is a descriptive passage. Salman Rushdie writes about the condition of emptiness, where memories and history are left behind, and this could be a similarity with Jonathan Swift’s text.  

7) I think the speaker has not a positive view about migration, since he closed his text with a reference to loss and memory. What the reader perceives is a melancholic tone which evokes a sense of desolation and emptiness.

8) Get information about the country you are moving to, his traditions, culture, habits and environment. It is important to speak a little the language, or at least to speak one understandable by the majority of the population (English, for example). Learn about the country’s history and laws.

9) Bruce Chatwin’s text is about travelling: according to his thesis,  all human activities are strictly “linked to the idea of journeys”, and this is the reason why human beings are so restless and unable to settle, both physically and psychologically. For instance, travelling is not just a walk, or a concrete movement: history teaches that at an early stage men managed to experience journeys exploiting the brain’s reaction to chemistry. In other words, they used hallucinatory mushrooms, hashish or wine, and sometimes settlers associated them with God.  Real journeys are more productive and worthy: the speaker clearly supports them. He makes reference to Li Po, taking him as an example of a man who has not a stable dwelling (he lodges in “the grey hills”), and when asked to the reason of such life, Li Po thoughts “sauntered off”, he was not able to answer. Travelling is something people need because it is innate in them.

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1. Custom duties, raw materials, smuggling, bribery, satire, houses, realism, morals, depravity
2. Stable, tradition, elegant, witty, materialist, responsible, hierarchy, privileged, individualist, pessimism, optimistic
3. The Whigs were formed in 1680 – descendants of Parliamentarians – supported by the wealthy and commercial classes fought for industrial and commercial development – became the Liberal Party. The Tories emerged in 1679-80 – descendants of the Royalists – supported by the Church of England and the landowners fought for the divine right of the monarch – became the Conservative Party

4. The first Prime Minister was the Whig Sir Robert Walpole: the figure is elected within the party. He appoint the ministers, who form the Cabinet.
5. F - T – T – F – T – F – T
6.  Material, hierarchical, local landowners, bribe, individualistic seizing opportunities