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FMovio - exercises on Mr. Bounderby
by FMovio - (2019-03-04)
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  1. Mr. Bounderby was as near being Mr. Gradgrind's bosom friend

a man perfectly devoid of sentiment

He was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not. A big, loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh. A man made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him. A man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such a strained skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open, and lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility.

A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr. Bounderby looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had the seven or eight added to it again, without surprising anybody. He had not much hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off; and that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness. 

2.A man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start.

inflated = exaggerated , pretentious, pompous  

A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man.

self-made man = self-reliant bold, audacious, confident,

 A man who was the Bully of humility.

bully = tormentor, ruffian, tough, tyrant, hectorer

 And that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness. 

boastful = pretentious, egotistic, proud, arrogant

 

3.  The characterization of Mr. Bounderby is strictly connected to the writer’s explicit comment on the character, since the description is filtered through a third person intrusive narrator. 

4. bounder = furfante, mascalzone

Bounder is a bad adjective which  characterizes an extreme ungentlemanly man. The phrase that more reinforces the meaning of the surname is “he was the bully of humility”.

 

5.  Though the poor origin of the character, lacking of education and self-made, here these attributes become negative because of the arrogant and pretentious way they are exhibited by Mr. Bonderby.

 

6. and 8. Reading Mr. Bounderby’s speech, the reader can notice that his words perfectly fit for the previous description of the character, his words translates and unveils Mr. Bounderby’s personality confirming the narrator’s comment.

 

7.  In Mr. Bounderby’s words, the stress is put on the self-reliant ascent of the character, on his determination and firmness, that makes him a perfect example of self-made man.

 

9. 'I hadn't a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I didn't know such a thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a pigsty. That's the way I spent my tenth birthday. Not that a ditch was new to me, for I was born in a ditch.'  Mrs. Gradgrind, a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking physic without any effect, and who, whenever she showed a symptom of coming to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling on her; Mrs. Gradgrind hoped it was a dry ditch?  'No! As wet as a sop. A foot of water in it,' said Mr. Bounderby.  'Enough to give a baby cold,' Mrs. Gradgrind considered.  'Cold? I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of everything else, I believe, that was capable of inflammation,' returned Mr. Bounderby. 'For years, ma'am, I was one of the most miserable little wretches ever seen. I was sosickly, that I was always moaning and groaning. I was so ragged and dirty, that you wouldn't have touched me with a pair of tongs.'  Mrs. Gradgrind faintly looked at the tongs, as the most appropriate thing her imbecility could think of doing.  'How I fought through it, Idon't know,' said Bounderby. 'I was determinedI supposeI have been a determined character in later life, and I suppose Iwas then. Here I am, Mrs. Gradgrind, anyhow, and nobody to thank for my being here, but myself.'

Mr. Bounderby’s way of talking is  focused on himself, as the repetition of the pronoun ‘I’ reveals. He is confident in  his life: his words perfectly fit in with the character’s description made by the narrator.