The Forsyte Saga, Complete by John Galsworthy

The Forsyte Saga is a series of three novels and two interludes (intervening episodes) published between 1906 and 1921 by Nobel Prize-winning English author John Galsworthy. They chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of an upper middle-class British family, similar to Galsworthy's own. Only a few generations removed from their farmer ancestors, the family members are keenly aware of their status as "new money". The main character, Soames Forsyte, sees himself as a "man of property" by virtue of his ability to accumulate material possessionsbut this does not succeed in bringing him pleasure. Separate sections of the saga, as well as the lengthy story in its entirety, have been adapted for cinema and television. The first book, The Man of Property, was adapted in 1949 by Hollywood as That Forsyte Woman, starring Errol Flynn, Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon and Robert Young. TheBBC produced a popular 26-part serial in 1967, that also dramatised a subsequent trilogy concerning the Forsytes, A Modern Comedy. In 2002, Granada Television produced two series for the ITVnetwork called The Forsyte Saga and The Forsyte Saga: To Let. The 1967 version inspired the popular Masterpiece Theatre television program, and the two Granada series made their runs in the US as part of that program. In 2003, The Forsyte Saga was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novel".

THE WAVES BY V. WOOLF

TYPE OF WORK GENRE

Novel

Stream-of-consciousness narrative; experimental novel Late 1920searly 1930s, England 1931

TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN

DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION PUBLISHER NARRATOR

Hogarth Press

The novel is narrated by the six main characters, switching between their separate yet interrelated internal monologues.
POINT OF VIEW

The point of view of The Waves is complex. Each individual narrator speaks in the first person, reporting his or her thoughts and impressions, as they occur, in a highly subjective way. However, the narrative is broken up and framed by a description of a passing day that is told in the voice of none of the characters, which introduces an objective element into the novel. Further, the shift in narration from character to character is signaled by a formulation such as said Bernard, or said Rhoda, indicating the presence of a bare-bones version of a thirdperson narrator, though this narrator is silent, allowing the characters to speak and think for themselves.
TONE

The tone of the novel is dreamy, lyrical, and sad.

The narrative framethe description of a passing dayis told in the past tense. The internal monologues of the characters are given as the thoughts occur: mostly in the present tense, with shifts into the past for memories.
TENSE SETTING (TIME)

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. England, in several locales, from the countryside, to a university, to London.

SETTING (PLACE) PROTAGONIST

The six major characters are all in some sense protagonists, but Bernard becomes the most prominent by the end of the novel.
MAJOR CONFLICT

The characters struggle to understand themselves and to come to terms with the death of their

friend Percival
RISING ACTION CLIMAX

Youth; everything up until Percivals death

The dinner party before Percivals departure Maturity; everything following Percivals death

FALLING ACTION THEMES MOTIFS

The influence of the other on the self; the desire for order and meaning; the acknowledgment of death

Stream-of-consciousness narration; leitmotifs The waves; Fin in a waste of waters; the apple tree

SYMBOLS

Rhoda is attracted to water from the beginning and is haunted by death throughout, as in the scene at the cliff, foreshadowing her eventual suicide; Louis imagines Percivals death before it happens; Bernard sees the porpoise fin before he learns what it means; as a child, Susan runs into the woods, away from Jinnys world and toward nature, where she eventually chooses to spend her life.
FORESHADOWING

This is Woolf's most experimental novel, and by most accounts the most difficult to read. The novel (Woolf preferred to call it a "play-poem," so much did it depart from typical novelistic conventions) weaves the voices of six different characters together. The effect is more like reading a prose poem than a novel.