Analysis

Art for heart’s sake

Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor,
author, engineer, and inventor. Goldberg was born July 4, 1883 in San Francisco,
California. After graduating from the University of California in 1904 he worked
as a cartoonist for a number of newspapers and magazines. He produced several
series of cartoons all of which were highly popular.
Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for
political cartooning in 1948 and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award in 1959. He was
a founding member and first president of the National Cartoonists Society and the
namesake of the Reuben Award, which the organization awards to its Cartoonist of
the Year. He is the inspiration for international competitions known as Rube
Goldberg Machine Contests which challenge participants to create a complicated
machine to perform a simple task.
Among his best works are “Is there a Doctor in the House?”, “Rube
Goldberg’s Guide to Europe” and “I made my bed”.
The Art for Heart’s sake was also written by Reuben Lucius Goldberg.
The title of the story reveals its subject matter: the story is about Old Ellsworth,
who has some health problems. Specifically, he has a habit to buy unnecessary
things. And after such buying Ellsworth had suffered a heart attack. Then Doctor
Caswell offers him to take up art.
The author presents this story as 3-d narration with dialogue of characters.
Through the conversations we can learn about characters, find out their relation to
each other.
The general mood is positive, humorous and emotional; throughout the
story the reader is sure that the treatment has really worked. There are some signs
of positive dynamics in the patient’s behavior. For example, when the doctor
called, Ellsworth would talk about graceful lines of things, color and so on. He was
interested in Museums and Art exhibitions. Tonality in the story is very
enthusiastic and rather bright.
 I think, conventionally the text can be divided into 4 parts: but remarkably,
there are no the explanation and the denouement. In my opinion, the text has 2
parts of the complication and 2 parts of climax. The first complication is the offer
of doctor to Old Ellsworth to take up art, the second complication is the meeting
and lessons with Swain. The first Climax is the decision of Ellsworth to exhibit his
“Trees Dressed in White” in the Summer show at the Lathrop Gallery. And the
second climax is the official envelope from the Lathrop Gallery about Ellsworth’s
win and news that he had bought this gallery the month before. These events are
equivalent, because both complications are important for the development of the
plot, and the both climax are equally unexpected.
The Characters of the story are Old Ellsworth, Doctor Caswell, Kopple
and Frank Swain. Here the author professionally used such stylistic device as
antonomasia. The names of characters reveal their features very clearly.
For example, Collins P. Ellsworth, the rich man of seventy-six, his name can
be divided into “Else” and “Worth”. This describes his predilection to any
purchases. In this case the author used zeugma for the irony (All his purchases of
recent years had to be liquidated at a great sacrifice both to his health and his
pocketbook).
He often uses slang words (Nope, Poppycock, by gum, Kinda), the author
wants to show the reader his impatience, rudeness, constant discontent. The author
uses metonymy “Old pineapple juice comes back”, Ellsworth didn’t like
pineapple juice, and doctor Caswell too, so as called him like that. The author
especially highlights his behavior as a child with help simile (He colored the often
spaces blue like a child playing with a picture book).
Doctor “Caswell” sounds as “Cause well” or “Castle”, this describes him as
a good, trustworthy man. And indeed, there are many situations in the story which
shows his high professional qualities. For example, such sentences “He received
the information with his usual professional calm”, “he had his stethoscope ready in
case the abruptness of the suggestion proved too much for the patient’s heart”,
“Doctor Caswell, exercising his professional self-control with supreme effort”.
Perhaps, he did it all for the money, however, he was doing his job responsibly,
worrying about the patient’s health, and the main thing for him was to succeed in
treatment.
Frank Swain is a promising student at the Art Institution. His name says
about he is a good, honest, open man. He is very polite and attentive to his pupil
Old Ellsworth. He addresses him exclusively “Sir”. For example, “Sir, I’m not an
artist yet”, “Try it, Mr. Ellsworth, please”. And when Ellsworth showed his awful
picture to Swain, the teacher said “Not bad”. Here the author uses litotes to
underline Swain’s courtesy and respect. I think, his behavior may be explained by
status and fortune of his pupil. Swain needed the money. But I believe, he really
respected Ellsworth, because his duties were only to hold classes three times a
week, but he brought Ellsworth his own box of water colors and tubes of oil, then
he visited the museums and art exhibitions with his pupil. I think it was his
personal initiative.
Koppel is the male nurse, helped Doctor to treat the old patient. But it was
hard for him. The author shows us his powerlessness, despair with help parallel
construction (he won’t take his pineapple juice. He doesn’t want me to read to
him. He hates the radio. He doesn’t anything).
The main problem of this story is “Money”. Generally, it is the main idea
of text, that everything can be bought for money.
The second problem is “Old Habits”. Old Habits are almost impossible to
give up. We have seen this by example Old Ellsworth.
The third problem is “Professional approach”. It is about Doctor Caswell
and Frank Swain. Like Caswell, Swain was also patient. He was professional too.
He was not indifferent to Ellsworth and worried about the picture Trees Dressed in
White. He sneaked into the Gallery, and the author describes his condition using
metaphor (he blushed to the top of his ears).
At the end of the story, we realize that it was planned by cunning Ellsworth.
He just pretended that the treatment worked to wear down doctor and nurses.
 The style of the story is quite simple, very realistic: this allows you to be
with the author on the same wavelength.