Analysis of the Text 2

The extract is taken from the novel by John Galsworthy “In Chancery”. It is written in belles-lettres style.
The text opens with the narration which is interrupted with the descriptions and the unuttered represented speech of Soames and the dialogue.
The author describes Soames’s meditations about the general exultation at a small victory at Mafeking.
In this text the author looks at the problem of future destiny of the country. It is rendered through the meditations of his main character who actually is the mouthpiece of the author.
The Predicative SPU: Why, this was serious--might come to anything! The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would come in different mood!
The most ws in the text belong to the neutral style however there are many ws and phrases which belong to the informal style: doggedly, hold up, pipe on, pipe off, stucco, idiocy, egad, to stink, to yell, hideous, mob. By this the author emphasizes the opposition between the gentility and Forsyteism with their reserve and restraint and the exultant mob.
The a. uses a number of synonyms speaking about the people in the street: a crowd, a mob, populace, swarm and even employs sustained metaphor with a simile within it: This stream of people came from every quarter, as if impulse had unlocked flood-gates, let flow waters. For the Forsytes don’t take them as people, as human-beings, they take them just as cauldron with the lid off. Through these metaphors and words of negative connotation populace and a mob J.G. opens up Soames’s irritation and discontent with this merry carnival. To show the opposition between the world of the Fs and the others the a employs the SD of Antithesis: In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to enter which people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling, dancing dervish of a crowd was swarming. / S. identifies Democracy with a crowd. The a. uses parallel constructions to stress this fact: This was the populace, the innumerable living negation of gentility and Forsyteism. This was Democracy! Here we observe a case of Metonymy: Democracy! It stank, yelled, was hideous!
Through the SD of Unuttered Represented Speech the a. shows S’s state of mind, his rejection of this excitement. The abundance of exclamatory sentences, rhetorical questions: Mafeking! Of course, it had been relieved! Good! But was that an excuse? This was--egad!--Democracy! It stank, yelled, was hideous! No, it wasn't English!, stylistic conversion: Nothing sacred to them - convey Soames’s condemnation.
Soames feels dread and deep surprise. It is a queer outlandish nightmare for him.
Here we observe the category of retrospection which reveals itself quite explicitly with the help of such lexical means as in 1900, He remembered, and in the late eighties and which brings a reader back to the events which S. was witness of.
Another category we observe in the text is the category of spatial continuum. Mafeking is a town in South Africa which had been relieved and that was a reason for such exultation.
The increase in Soames’s emotional tension is rendered with a help of the SD of Climax (Gradation):
He was bewildered, exasperated, offended.
The SD of repetition It wasn't English! No, it wasn't English! also contributes into the emotional state of Soames.
He is lonely, he does not have anybody to share his thoughts and feelings. The a opens up this idea through the elliptical sentences: A wife! Somebody to talk things over with. One had a right! Damn it! One had a right!
Summing up our analysis we come to the conclusion that S suffers from deep depression. He is afraid of another revolution, of violence, of the coming fall and decline of the British Empire. He is full of resentment against all the changes in the society.
Categories
-of modality
-prospect (future events)
-of discontinium (abrupt change of events)