"Oh, he is cruel!" Maggie sobbed aloud, finding a wretched pleasure in the hollow resonance that came through the long empty space of the attic. She never thought of beating or grinding her Fetish; she was too miserable to be angry.
These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.
This text furnishes an easier exercise in interpretation, does it not? It does not require a great stretch of imagination to slip back five, ten, a dozen years to play with these children. But I cannot let you play with them. We want to meet and know them. The task for your imagination is not so simple as you think. It is called upon to engage in character interpretation. You cannot be allowed to merely watch Maggie and Tom play, or even to play with them. You must use your imagination to get inside the minds, hearts, souls of this boy and girl and reveal them to us. You must relive this scene for us, becoming first Maggie and then Tom. This exercise of your imagination belongs in its final and complete stage to the next and last of our studies, and to work on the drama; so we shall not demand too much of you along this line here, and I shall confine my suggestive analysis of the text to the following questions:
Define the relation existing between this brother and sister indicated by this scene.
Is this scene typical of their relation?
Is it a relation likely to obtain throughout their lives? Why?
Define the dispositions of these two children by applying to each three adjectives.
Will Maggie or Tom make the sacrifices inevitable to such a relation?
Characterize as to inflection and tone-color Maggie's voice and Tom's. (If your use of this book has been intelligently directed you have already made a study of these two elements of a vocal vocabulary—inflection and tone-color.)
Answer these questions and re-read the scene.