Read the text and analyze it. «The Ant and Grasshopper »
1. The title of the story is The Ant and the Grasshopper
2. It’s written by W. S. Maugham. He was an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s. By 1914, Maugham was famous, with 10 plays produced and 10 novels published. Too old to enlist when the First World War broke out, he served in France as a member of the British Red Cross's so-called "Literary Ambulance Drivers", a group of some 24 well-known writers, including the Americans John Dos Passos, E. E. Cummings, and Ernest Hemingway.
3. Type of the piece of literature: Social
4. Analysis of characters:
The main characters are Tom Ramsey and George Ramsey
George, only a year older than his brother, looked sixty. He had never taken more than a fortnight's holiday in the year. He was in his office every morning at nine-thirty and never left it till six. He was honest and industrious. He had a good wife and four daughters to whom he was the best of fathers. His plan was to retire at fifty-five to a little house in the country. His life was blameless.
Flat characters: the author, George's wife and four daughters and Tom's engaged woman old enough to be his mother.
5. The main idea: the society does not care for the means of someone’s success. This story records the truth that all those who work hard do not gain success. Though this story presents the darker side of life, it discloses the drastic changes that take place in the minds of the people regarding life
6. Complication: When I was a small boy I was made to learn by heart some fables of La Fontaine and the moral of each was carefully explained to me. Among them was "The Ant and the Grasshopper". In spite of the moral of this f able my sympathies were with the grasshopper and for some time I never saw an ant without putting my foot on it.
I couldn't help thinking of this fable when the other day I saw George Ramsay lunching in a restaurant. I never saw an expressien of such deep gloom. He vras staring into space. I was sorry for him: I suspected at once that his unfortunate brother had been causing trouble again.
7. Climax: He used to say: "It was all well when Tom was young and good-looking. In four years he'll be fifty. He won't find life so easy then. I shall have thirty thousand pounds by the time I'm fifty. We shall see what is really best to work or to be idle."
Poor George! I sympathized with him. I wondered now what else Tom had done. George was very much upset. I was prepared for the worst. George could hardly speak. "A few weeks ago," he said, "Tom became engaged to a woman old enough to be his mother. And now she has died and left him everything she had: half a million pounds, a yacht, a house in London and a house in the country. It is not fair, I tell you, it isn't fair!"
I couldn't help it. I burst into laughter as I looked at George's face, I nearly fell on the floor. George never forgave me. But Tom often asks me to dinners in his charming house and if he sometimes borrows money from me, it is simply from force of habit.
8. Describing symbolism of the piece of literature: Don’t be lazy
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