Lycée de la Côtière

On the threshold of a new world

 Read the text and answer the following questions.

1.Introduce the document This text is an extract/excerpt from “Ellis Island and Other Stories” by Mark Helprin. It is entitled “On the threshold of a new world” and it deals with immigration to the U.S.A at the beginning of the 20th century/ at the turn of the century / early in the 20th century/ It was published in 1976.

2.Where and when do you think the story takes place? Justify? The story takes place in Ellis Island, the famous immigration center/station in New York harbor. Between 1892 and 1952 most immigrants from Europe had to go through it before being allowed into the U.S.A. Newcomers sailed past the Statue of Liberty and were disembarked/ landed on Ellis Island for medical check-up and immigration controls. The story probably takes place around 1907,the peak period of immigration from Eastern Europe.

3.Comment on the title of the excerpt ‘On the Threshold of a new world’. A “threshold is a stone in front of a door. New York was the gateway to America, the door to the promised land, to the land of opportunity. For immigrants, Ellis Island was then an in-between before reaching paradise, the starting point of a new life.

4. Say in a few words who the narrator is. (probable origin / age / occupation) The must be a Jewish Russian immigrant as / since he speaks Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian. He is very learned and educated and is a writer, he must have left his country for religious or political reasons / because of political or religious persecution or censorship.

5.This text can be divided into three parts. Find these three parts and give each one a short title summing up the main idea. L1 to l21: medical examinations / L22 to l41: questioning / l42 To the end: Fantasies

6. After reading the first paragraph, how would you define the way the narrator feels immigrants were treated at Ellis Island? Comment on the verb forms to justify.

The narrator feels

immigrants were treated like animals. (“carelessly”l2). They proceed from one room to another and are examined like cattle to be sold on the market place + use of the passive form (“I was taken” l1 ) and of the structure “make so do stg”. The people who examine immigrants are given no names which suggests they don’t introduce themselves. Therefore, the immigrants don’t know who these people are, what their field of competence is – doctors? nurses? military men? Clerks? . It conveys an impression of coldness and lack of concern.

7. What disease are they looking for? Why? The immigrants were checked for Trachoma , a highly contagious eye-disease which made people blind ( nurses or doctors lifted their eyelids (l2, 3) and for tuberculosis, so they made people cough and breathe to check their lungs. If they had a serious disease, they were not allowed to enter.

8. Which of the following adjectives best applies to the fat man? Pick out one sentence to justify your choice: powerful – indifferent – friendly – sympathetic – wary POWERfUL: He has the power to “refuse” him, to send him back so the narrator has to do what/as he was told. (“if I want, I can ship you there, so you’d better do as I tell you” l 19/20)

9. How does the narrator react to the fat man’s orders? Why? The narrator reacts with (dark) irony . (L 11,12,13).

10. What does the fat man mean when he says: ‘Because when we sing our National Anthem, we bend over”(l16) ? The fat man wants to make it clear to the narrator than being a good American goes with being patriotic and having a strong sense of belonging (ex: knowing the constitution, paying allegiance to the flag, singing the National Anthem)

11. Read from line 22 to line 43 – Pick out at least five words showing the woman’s feelings and attitude

towards the narrator. “cold eyes” (l22) / “suspicious”(l27) / “sharply, closing one eye and squinting with the other” (l 29,30) /”evident disgust” (l 36) / “she inquired” (l 36) / “she commanded” (l 38) / “she shouted” (l 39) / “she pushed me into the hall” (l41)

We can feel /distrust-

mistrust / contempt (contemptuous) / despise, disdain (despiteful/ disdainful) and even disgust in the woman official’s attitude. She looks very haughty and obviously feels superior. She doesn’t speak to him as to an equal human being who could understand what sort of checking they’re doing there: she could have explained, talked to him about the letter she wrote on his back.

12. How far can you say that the woman’s feelings and attitude are paradoxical? Her feelings and attitude are paradoxical in so far as the narrator is probably more literate and educated than she is! But she is all the more suspicious when he tells her that he is a writer and can speak several languages as she thinks he won’t be able to make a living in America with his writing. She is not impressed because in America people came to make money, not to write! She thus considers him a madman.

13. How does he react? The narrator is naïve and thinks being a writer and being multilingual is an advantage so he feels confident and even superior. He reacts as well with irony and humour (“I replied pompously” l33 “it’s very perceptive”l37 ).

14. What does the letter she wrote on his back mean? When an immigrant was put a chalk mark on his back, it meant that he was going to be sent for a full medical examination. Here the narrator is suspected to be mental deficient / to have a mental defect.

15. What does the narrator understand? The narrator doesn’t know why the woman drew a letter on his back. That’s why he imagines he has passed the test and is allowed to enter America.

16. Read line 42 to the end. Which verb form is repeated several times? What does it suggest? “would” is repeated several times in the last paragraph. (l43/ l45 / l46/l47). He uses “would” like a child who invents stories while playing. It suggests that the narrator’s imagination has taken over and that he’s imagining himself in a fairyland/ a dreamland.

17. What vision of New York and Manhattan does the narrator have? Pick out elements to justify your answer. He has no idea whatsoever of America. He imagines Manhattan with meadows, forests, like the Alps in Europe! (Austria or Switzerland). He even imagines himself living in a palace with a beautiful girl!

18. What does it show about him and his representation of America? It shows he has a European representation of life. For him, America is a dreamland, a fairy land (American Dream) with meadows, forests, castles whereas Manhattan was already all built up (except for Central Park) at the time. In fact, life was going to be hard for most immigrants, some parts of Manhattan were overcrowded (the Lower East Side particularly) and they worked hard to make a living (ex:sweatshops). But on the whole, for most of them, life was much better than what they had left (poverty, war, hunger, persecution) and some of them or their descendants made it/succeeded in America! As a conclusion, we don’t know if he really believes in his fairy tale story but it is at least a story he could write about…if not live.