Analysis of Katherine Mansfield’s ‘Bank Holiday’ Short Story

Category: Holidays
Last Updated: 30 Mar 2023
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I have read the story under the title "Bank Holiday" by Katherine Mansfield. Speaking about the author, I should say that Katherine Mansfield was born In New Zealand In 1888. Katherine Is a New Zealand writer and she Is known by her short stories which deal with human nature and psychology. This Is a philosophical story for a discerning reader who has to read between the lines.

Giving the reader a chance to see somebody else s inner life, presented directly and indirectly, the author at the same time does not provide any answers to the questions that one asks himself. The author seems to grant the reader a chance to take leave to doubt and disagree with what he concludes and infers. Being imposing, she's at the same time pretty unobtrusive which definitely, makes a merit of the story. The story under consideration is narration interlaced with descriptive passages.

This story is ironical when the author shows regret, displeasure and annoyance of the situation. The author shows us Inconsistence way of life different representatives of social classes. In this story details play the main role, the Ironical description of their clothes, the old Oman the author reserved detachment and metaphor, he compares old women with old dusty pin-cushions. Through the choice of the words, the author uses for main characters' description, we can easily understand the author's attitude to them.

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The author criticizes them. The plot of the short story relies on the internal conflict between the crowd and society. The action of the story occurred in the street during celebrating the holiday. The story under analysis is a third-person narrative. The story is about a festival, which involves a big crowd of People from all different social lasses, to spend a Good time together and enjoy themselves. The main problem that story touches upon Is about people's unwillingness to improve their life, to achieve something better.

The character of the story Is a middle-class crowd, miserable people described with bitterness who haven achieve anything but remained the past old times. There Is no action and the events are trivial but we understand the unhappiness of the existence of the crowd. On the one hand their life is dynamic but it's concentrated on trivial events, nothing important, all these people remained in the past. This life is concentrating on some talking, that it's nothing important. The author is disguised.

The crowd is presented by different people, but all of them are similar in their world view, besides poor clothes they are illiterate. The way people spill the lemonade they spill their lives. The author addresses to the reader "Look out! Don't spill your own lives". She described people without any future. The story falls into three logically connected parts. The first part of the story is taken up the introduction of the crowd, on the one hand they are different people, but all of them haven't any future.

The story presents some pictures and the flirts of them Is crowd, people who are quite and who understanding the music . Then It presents children. They might have had something better but they haven't an opportunity to develop In such society. There a lot of detachments, so the author underlines all the details not to miss anything. Alliteration in the sentence: and is dissolved, and the crowd scatters, mobbing slowly up the hill" produces affect on the reader. The author uses a lot of verbs: "dodging, nudging, talking... " To show the aggressiveness of the situation.

The subject of the depiction in the second part is a fair, during which people sell ugly things and it metaphorically shows. This fact proves the ugliness of the crowd's existence The story reaches the climax by gradation. The crowd rise top on the hill and it seems that something must change but everything remains the same and they continue to live a useless life. The idea of the text can be state as follows: the author is trying to convince the reader that people must not waste their life. Every person has a chance for a better life, but he does it better by himself.

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Analysis of Katherine Mansfield’s ‘Bank Holiday’ Short Story. (2017, Nov 15). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/bank-holiday/

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