Questions and tasks for discussion:

Who is the narrator of the story? Who was he at the time of the events described?

What event is described?

Who is Andrew?

Read what he says in the 1^st paragraph. Comment on the way he speaks (pay attention to the choice of words, syntax and humorous effect).

What do you think about Andrew?

What creates the local colouring of the text?

Find a metaphor in § 2. What effect does it produce?

How is Andrew’s behaviour rendered?

Where does the author’s humour lie?

Why are all the names of songs listed?

What can you say about the narrator?

How is the squire’s mother portrayed?

Underline idiomatic expressions in § 3. What role do they play?

What words help to understand Andrew’s state of mind?

Analyze the tenses in § 4. What morphological stylistic devise is used here?

Find the epithets describing Andrew’s condition. Do you think the writer sympathizes with Andrew?

What is Andrew’s face compared to? What stylistic devise is used here?

 Find words and idiomatic expressions that help to create humorous effect in §5.

What can you say about the grammatical structure of the sentence "`Tis a question…"? How many subordinate clauses are put down before the principal one? What effect is achieved by this syntactical means?

Find the example of exaggeration. What effect does it produce?

Do you think Hardy really treats Andrew as "a vile imposter"?

Find parallelism in § 6. What role does it play?

What can you say about the members of the squire’s family?

Does the final note darken the humorous slant of the whole story? What does this pessimistic remark mean?