Rettelse af stil

The Whaler

God, I wish I could be a child again. A little innocent child with no worries and no responsibility. Who hasn’t made such a wish once in a while trough the years. The many years of watching grey. When you’re As a child, everything seemed black and white. Every cartoon had its heroes and its bad guys. Mrs Brown next door was mean because she yelled at you, when you were sliding down the banisters, and Mrs Martins upstairs on the other hand she was a nice lady because she always offered you cookies.

When you grew older you realized that maybe Mrs Brown wasn’t that awful. Maybe she was just a lonely old lady, who never got her naps because of the noise in the corridor and still felt bitter after her husband left her for another woman who could give him the three sons he always wanted.

And maybe your childhood hero turns (turned ?) out to be nothing but a fool. The one you looked up to, the one who had travelled the world, brought down monsters and survived it all. When the Whaler himself tells you that he hadn’t (hasn't ?) killed any whales, in fact he hasn’t even seen one. Then your black-and-white-world gets stirred.

The Whaler is a short story written by Joe Sheerin (fjern komma) and told/(narrated) by a man who is looking back on the day his childish innocence suffered a blow.

The clever schoolboy faces the real world in the form of “The idol of my young imagination.”[1] – the Whaler. The first glamour of meeting his hero disappears before it even gets there. “…I realized to my extreme embarrassment that he was defecating.”[2] The unattainable hero suddenly becomes deadly human. Admiration turns into contempt. But the teller narrator stays, and he even takes the horrid hand when the Whaler wants to share his secret. “I took it, careful not to offend but careful not to infect. It was a softer handshake than I had imagined.”[3] The handshake tells it all. The teller expects a firm handshake from this fighter from the sea. Instead it’s (eventuelt: it is) soft. Soft like ice cream and pillows, but not like your ideal – the Whaler. He can’t be soft.

But he is, and he is a liar. The Whaler has never seen a whale. And the uncomfortable situation gets worse. “Never saw a whale. The hero of my lonely stories.”[4]

Like the fresh white loaf on the top of the week’s grocery, the teller narrator is innocent and unharmed by the realities of the world. But when the wasp tries to poison the bread, the teller narrator just shooed him away, but the Whaler’s poison isn’t that easy to run from.

Also the picture of the bad guy – the whale – looses its fearlessness, when the whaler compared it with twice the size of “…a blackthorn in blossom.”[5] How pathetic can it be? Your biggest fear is in blossom.

But the hero and the bad guy aren’t the only ones who don’t (eventuelt: do not) live up to the teller’s narrator's imagination. Also Mrs Ellen Early, the believing teacher, doesn’t turn out as innocent as she sounds. When the Whaler discloses their affair “… A thunderclap of silence stopped the morning in its tracks.”[6] First, the teller narrator is in shock – a shock that aged his body. But then “… The sun filled the whole sky.”[7] Suddenly he seems sees the world (fjern komma) as it really is, and realizes that he had has been living on a lie. The people he looked up to, his role models, they weren’t perfect. “I stood on the incline above him and looked him in the eye. “I’ll keep your secret.””[8] For the first time in the story, the teller narrator is now higher (hvis højde: taller - ellers snarere: bigger, hvis i betydningen 'større') than the Whaler. In the beginning he felt little compared to him, then after founding out that he never saw a whale, they were on the same line. But now the teller narrator is higher (taller / bigger) than his hero, and he looks him in the eye. Not on his Adam’s apple and not on his chest – in his eye. He is better than his idol, better than his hero.

Jeg synes, det ser rigtig fint ud. Lige et par ting:

1) En 'fortæller' hedder 'narrator' på engelsk.
2) Du blander tempus (tid) nogle gange. Som udgangspunkt enten nutid + førnutid eller datid + førdatid. Selve introen har du i datid, men hold gerne gennemgangen af teksten i nutid + førnutid hele vejen igennem.
3) Jeg har desuden fjernet et par kommaer, som ikke skal være der. I reglen er der færre kommaer på engelsk end dansk.
4) Nogle af sammentrækningerne er jeg ikke så meget fan af. Det beror mere på stilistik end grammatisk korrekthed - for det, du har skrevet, er rigtigt nok.

Håber det kan bruges.

Hej policemanmem

Mange tak for dit svar - det var vældigt pænt af dig og rigtig konstruktivt! :D

I fremtiden vil jeg være opmærksom på det du påpeger!

Jeg er også helt enig med dig i sammentrækningerne, men har en lærer der elsker dem hvorend muligt ;) Tror dog, jeg vil følge dine anbefalinger her.

Igen tak - det var en stor hjælp!