TEXT THREE



Isak Dinesen

The Iguana

Karen Dinesen (1885-1962) was a Danish woman who married a Swedish baron and went to Kenya in East Africa with him in 1914 to manage their coffee plantation. After their divorce she stayed in Kenya till 1931. During this time she started to write in English (the language of the whites in the country), taking the male first name Isak. Her best known works are Seven Gothic Tales (1934), a volume of stories, and Out of Africa (1937), her reminiscences of Kenya. The following brief selection from the latter volume appeared in the section called ‘From an Immigrant’s Notebook.’

1 In the Reserve I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizards, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the colour seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet’s luminous tail.

2 Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was lying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all colour was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendour. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag.

3 Often since I have, in some sort, shot an Iguana, and I have remembered the one of the Reserve. Up at Meru I saw a young Native girl with a bracelet on, a leather strap two inches wide, and embroidered all over with very small turquoise-coloured beads which varied a little in colour and played in green, light blue and ultramarine. It was an extraordinarily live thing; it seemed to draw breath on her arm, so that I wanted it for myself, and I made Farah, my servant, buy it from her. No sooner had it come upon my arm than it gave up the ghost. It was nothing now, a small, cheap, purchased article of finery. It had been the play of colours, the duet between the turquoise and the ‘negre’,- that quick, sweet, brownish black, like peat and black pottery, of the Native’s skin,- that had created the life of the bracelet.

4 In the Zoological Museum of Pietermaritzburg, I have seen, in a stuffed deep-water fish in a showcase, the same combination of colouring, which there had survived death; it made me wonder what life can well be like, on the bottom of the sea, to send up something so live and airy. I stood in Meru and looked at my pale hand and at the dead bracelet, it was as if an injustice had been done to a noble thing, as if truth had been suppressed. So sad did it seem that I remembered the saying of the hero in the book that I had read as a child:’ I have conquered them all but I am standing amongst graves.’

5 In a foreign country and with foreign species of life one should take measures to find out whether things will be keeping their value when dead. To the settlers of East Africa I give the advice: ’For the sake of your own eyes and heart, shoot not the Iguana.’

Text discussion:

1. In the essay the act of shooting an iguana comes to stand as a type or model of other actions; it becomes a symbolic event. How do the incidents described in the other paragraphs help revealing the full meaning of the symbolic action of shooting an iguana? Restate its meaning in your own words.

2. How do you understand the last sentence and its argument?

3. Dinesen uses three concrete examples here. How are they related? Why do you suppose she arranged them the way she did?

Text analysis:

1. What type of narrative does the text represent? What aim is achieved?

2. Would you divide the text into parts? How many? What would each part centre on? which would be the central part of the extract under discussion?

3. Is there any development of action both time- and placewise? Exemplify.

4. Comment on the usage of contextual synonyms by the Author: What are the most often repeated words and notions in the text? What effect do they have on the reader?

5. Comment on the usage of the capital letters and personal pronouns.

6. What is the function of the words depicting colour?

7. What role do the French words play in Paragraph 3?

8. Comment upon the function of inversion in the text.

9. Are there more nouns or verbs in the text? What effect does it create?

10. Give a written translation of paragraphs 2 and 3.

Language:

1. Paraphrase, using expressions from the text:

1) get discoloured

2) very lively

3) hand-band

4) start action

5) move with a rustling sound

6) become live on the girl’s wrist

7) thing had lasted beyond its death

8) ‘I have got the victory, but all the people are dead.’

9) flame was extinguished

10) a worthy thing

2. Give the translation for:

Reserve

precious stone

radiate

lump of concrete

embroidered leather strap

give up the ghost

article of finery

do injustice to sb/sth

foreign species of life

stuffed fish in a showcase

to suppress the truth

conquer

keep one’s value

take measures

peat

black pottery

impetuous

memorise the expressions and use them in sentences of your own.

3. Write out all the words pertaining to colour scheme and colour change. Find the ‘missing’ colour names in the dictionary.

4. Remark on the difference between the words and expressions:

1. luminous- shiny

2. fade - grow pale

3. precious stone - jewel

4. embroider - adorn

5. draw breath - breathe in

6. swish - rustle

7. be divorced - be separated

8. radiate - shine

9. hero of a book - character in a book

10. wonder about - wander about

5. Rewrite the text from

a) the Iguana point of view

b) the point of view of the Native girl

c) the point of view of an indifferent onlooker.

Word study:

Give the polysemy and idioms with eye, heart

Give the synonyms of shine, die/death, famous, ghost/fairy

Essay:

In her meditation, Dinesen moves from the actual to the general. Try this technique yourself. Find some incident in your life that reminds you of other similar events, so that they can be brought together as being symbolic of a certain kind of event. To what broader point can you leap from these few recollected events? Express your thoughts and attitudes in the form of a 1000 words (about three pages, standard formatting) essay.

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