Karina Al Frihat

Analysis

The text under analysis is a chapter from the comedy novel “Three men in a boat” by
Jerome Klapka Jerome.
Jerome Klapka Herome is a well-known English writer who is famous for his art of telling
stories with humour which is usually expressed in provoking situations often based on
misunderstandings.
As for me, I see the main message of this very extract is the helplessness of some
people who had never done something for living with their bare hands. The characters are
middle-class people because they can afford such a journey and even with a dog. If we look
deeper and read some information about them, we will find out that George works in a bank,
Harris fancies himself a singer and we don’t learn much about his background in terms of his
working life, but, like his friends, he seems to be part of the emergent middle class of white-
collar workers in Victorian England. Montmorency is J.’s dog who goes along on the trip with
the three men. And even if we don’t read the whole book, while reading the making-Irish-
stew scene we can figure out that they cook themselves for the first time (the description of
them peeling potatoes is ridiculous).
The text is in the first narration and our narrator is J. who is a prototype of the author
himself. The work interests the readers with the choice of vocabulary. Jerome K. Jerome
uses a mixture of different levels of the vocabulary; he combines neutral and colloquial
words with bookish words and even professional terms. The choice of vocabulary and the
way of describing actions make us watch the clash between the lexis and the situation. The
genre is comedy, so the whole text is imbued with irony and sometimes even hyperbole. The
most interesting thing is that the further we read, the more absurd and hyperbolized the story
gets.
The extract starts with an exposition which is represented by the description of the
beautiful and comforting destination of the place where the action comes to pass - village
Sonning. From the very beginning we see the narrator admiring Sonning and we can’t help
doing the same. The author uses a lot of epithets (sweet Sonning, fairy-like nook, veritable
picture, awkward stairs etc.). We also fall for this place because of other ways of J.’s
representation of the village. He compares Sonning with a stage village because it doesn’t
look like one built of bricks and mortar. He uses expressive phrases to describe his
surroundings (“every house is smothered in roses”). We even can see a prolonged
metaphor: “clouds of dainty splendour”.
Then we observe the development of the story when George suggests cooking Irish stew.
In this part, the text is full of humour. And in terms of vocabulary, the author uses not only a
lot of stylistic devices but he also includes some professional cooking terms. He also wedges
in some kind of allusion to German culture (for five-and-twenty minutes). We can find good
examples of gradation (good, slap-up supper), litotes (size of pea-nut), anadiplosis (“You
must scrape them!” So we scraped them…”) etc. This part of the text is very exciting for me
in terms of syntax. The author uses long and complex sentences including a lot of detached
constructions and polysyndeton (a lot of repeated conjunctions in the description of the
receipt of Irish stew) at the beginning and then they become shorter and abrupt. Which ruins
the smooth narration but also gives us a better understanding of the characters’ feelings.
Another curious moment is the description of Montmorency’s - the dog’s - actions and
attitude. While describing people Jerome K. Jerome uses neutral or even colloquial speech,
Montmorency seems to be honoured with another attitude. The author chooses high-flown
words to talk about the dog which makes the whole situation even more ironic.
Then we come to the climax of the story - a scene of discussion whether to put a dead
water-rat which Montmorency brought or not to. Here we are provided with another
vocabulary unit, legal terms (proceedings, “stood up for precedent”).
The final scene is the episode of tasting a wonderful dish prepared by common efforts.
The narrator goes into taste’s description. He uses chanting sentences to convey all the
strangeness of the resulting taste. We can see a metonymy (“one’s palate”), simile (“like
nothing else on earth”) and epithets (nourishing, piquant, nutritious).
To recapitulate my thoughts about this extract, I can relate to all characters because every
one of them is similar to me (even Montmorency). While trying to retell the story from a
different point of view, I have been in everyone’s shoes and I feel sympathy for all of them
(because firstly I didn’t like any of them). Only one thing that makes me feel a little disgusted
about them is their ignorance in terms of cooking. Their stew was a success, but I think it
was just because of luck and because they had to be hungry while travelling. But the story
itself is a poem! I laughed a lot and this made me like this work. But the text itself (I mean its
analysis) I liked more than the story itself. Jerome K. Jerome’s language is very interesting!