THE STRANGE-LOOKING MAN
The Starting Point. “I got the idea for ‘The Strange-Looking Man,’” says Mrs. Costello, “from reading of the homecoming of a Canadian soldier, limbless, partially blind, wholly demented, to his young wife—Homebringing, I should have said. As I read, I simply saw the story as it was written, nor could I help feeling as I wrote that my little boy symbolized Germany as she is and my young man life, as we are now so strongly hoping it may come to be.”
The statement from the author serves, also, to explain her symbolical treatment.
Setting. Should you judge, from the connotation, that the time is the near or far future? What is the place? How is it indicated?
Action. Brief; it begins “One morning,” page 363, and ends with the final words, page 364. Do you foresee the dénouement?
The narrative is remarkable in that it supposes a condition the reverse, in many respects, of life in ante bellum days. The child rocks his father’s cradle. He is frightened by a whole man. The wrecks of men, in the pictured setting, contrast sharply with the traveler, pages 363, 364.
Theme. State the underlying idea, and show how it is intensified by subsidiary ideas.