THINKS, David Lodge
Chapter 1
Short denotative analysis
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He is in his office in the campus of the University of
Gloucester
it’s Sunday the 23rd of February at 10.13 a.m. and he is
testing his recorder
he thinks about his previous relationship with Isabel and
his conference in San Diego;
He thinks about sex and death;
Characters
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The narrative voice;
Isabel Hotchkiss;
Carrie and not named children;
Laetitia Glover;
Helen Reed;
Marianne.
Setting
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Narrator’s office in the campus of the University of
Gloucester on
Sunday the 23rd of February at 10.13 a.m. and at
11.03;
Unstable weather
Narrative technique
The speaking voice records his thoughts on his recorder

Stream of consciousness
(William James)
New language and info
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What ever it was;
Speech recognitor;
I wonder where;
To typist;
To slink off;
Squash;
THINKS, David Lodge
Chapter 2
Short denotative analysis
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Helen lives in a maisonette but she wants to go away
She does the first lesson at the university and watches
Ghost
She goes to Richmond’s party and meets the guests
there
The next day she goes to the church even if she doesn’t
believe in God
Characters
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Helen Reed and Ralph Messenger: protagonists
Jasper Richmond: Helen’s friend
Russell Marsden: a teacher
Paul and Lucy:Helen’s children
Marianne Richmond: Jasper’s wife
Simon Bellamy: a student
Rachel McNulty: a student
Martin: Ralph’s friend
Oliver: Jasper’s son
Guests at the party
Carrie: Ralph’s wife
Setting
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Maisonette
Richmond’s house
College
Narrative technique
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Diary
Direct style
Descriptions
Free direct style
THINKS, David Lodge
Chapter 3
They are looking at exhibition of paintings
They decide to have lunch together
religion
They speak about
death and life after death
cognitive sciences
They have a walk
They visit the Brain (He explains her its meanings)
Ralph
Main character:
professor of Cognitive
science
Main
character: novelist
Helen
and professor of Cretive
writing
Jim, Carl, Kenji
Ralph’s students
Professor Douglass (Duggers)
Ralph’s collegue
Stuart Phillips
Systems
administrator
TIME: Wednesday of the second week of the semester
SPACE:
University’s Staff House
In the
University
The Brain
Dining Room
Campus
Third person narrator
Present tense
Dialogue between Ralph and Helen
Short descriptions
They speak each other for the first time
Altercation between the characters:
1° chapter:
Rational and scientific
thoughts
2° chapter:
Irrational and sentimental
thoughts
3° chapter:
Discussion and synthesis
Scientific names
Scientific but simple explanation
Ralph’s and Helen’s different cultures and points of view
The third chapter is the synthesis of the first and the second
MEANING:
Undergraduate a university student who has not received a first degree.
Postgraduate a student who is taking advanced work after graduation
PhD
Doctor of Philosophy = Dottorato di Ricerca
VC
Vice-Chancellor
Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a
bat?)
Prisoner’s Dilemma
Experiments
Searle’s Chinese Room
Frank Jackson’s Mary
Schrödinger’s Cat
Henry James
American writer, known for his novels and tales
about conscience and morality
THINKS, David Lodge
Chapter 4
SHORT DENOTATIVE ANALYSIS
 problem in the Brain
 Ralph listens to the tape
 religious reflection
 what someone can do, if the partner dies
 problem solved: it was a mouse
CHARACTERS
 Ralph
 Helen Reed
SETTING
 Office
 Staff House
NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE
 stream of consciousness
MESSAGE
our consciousness is like a private room
(The privacy of consciousness, the secrecy of thought)
SPACE AND TIME:
• Wednesday, 26th February, 6.51 p.m.
NEW LANGUAGE AND INFO WE GATHERED:
• to belch = ruttare
• wiring = impianto elettrico
• riveting = appassionante
• utter =completo
• huff = arrabbiato
• inherit = ereditare
THINKS, David Lodge
Chapter 5
SHORT DENOTATIVE ANALYSIS
CHAPTER V
• Helen Reed remembers events of the previous day
• consciousness as a problem
• architecture of the mind
• shopping in Cheltenham
• chat at Messenger’s house.
SETTING:
• Cheltenham;
• Messenger’s house.
MESSAGE:
• to represent consciousness is a problem.
NEW LANGUAGE AND INFO
WE LEARNED:
• aprons= grembiule, gironzolare, indugiare
• grief= dolore
• to loiter= intransitive verb; attardarsi
• to poke= attizzare
THINKS, David Lodge
Chapter 6
Denotative Analysis
• Ralph Messenger is in his office testing his new elaborate
software which recgnizes your voice while you’re speaking
• he’s talking about his private thoughts trying to recall an
experience distant in time
GOAL:
find out how our mind recomposes memories
after many years
first memory: the loss of his virginity with a married older woman
Characters
– Ralph Messenger
– The Richmonds (Marianne)
– Carrie Messenger
– Martha Beard
– Tom Beard
– Helen Reed
Setting
TIME
- Sunday, the 2nd of March, 8.45 a.m.
- Messenger at the age of seventeen
SPACE
- Messenger’s office at University of
Glouchester
- a ship farm in the Dales
Narrative Technique
• Lodge uses once againthe stream of
consciousness as a first person narration to tell
about Messenger’s thoughts
• he uses lots of dots so that the text is free
from connectors or linkers and he can easily
move from one topic to the other
From the Reader’s Point of View
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO RECALL
MEMORIES
old details remind
us of something
new and move our
mind from one
thought to another
can we reconstruct our older
memories when our mind is
vulnerable to thoughts more
recent?
YES
New words
amount of
gibberish
parole senza senso
to snog
sbaciucchiarsi
loo
cesso
g-string
perizoma
glee
allegria
to cuckold
cornificare
THINKS, David Lodge
Chapter 7
Short denotative analysis
reading her student’s work-inprogress
Thinking of her daughter
Helen Reed tells some
of her activities:
Reflect about the
“relationship motherdaughter”
Deciding to have a e-mail
address
buying a
swimming
costume
Thinking about Jean-Dominique
Bauby (a French writer)
Invitation to Ralph’s
hot tub
Visiting Gloucester Cathedral
Giving instructions to her tenants
Short denotative analysis
Helen
The speaking voice
Ralph
Many students of
Creative Writing (just
mentioned)
Jean-Dominique
Bauby (just
mentioned)
Lucy (just
mentioned)
A French journalist
Helen’s daughter
Setting
TIME:
From Monday 3° March to Saturday 8° March
SPACE:
Her maisonette
In the University
The Brain
Campus bookshop
A shop in Gloucester
Gloucester Cathedral
Narrative Tachnique
First person narrator
Diary
Past tense
Accounts followed by reflections
Storyline
She is improving her relationship with Ralph.
She is getting acclimatized at work.
LITERATURE
Fiction
The writer invents
lives and thoughts
J.-D. Bauby
Eyelid code: importance
of literature.
Particular features
Importance of reflections
From banal daily experience to existential problems
Meta-literature
Different lifestyles: Relationship between mother and daughter
Renting one’s house
Independence of young people
New words and concepts
LITERARY GENRE MENTIONED BY HELEN:
Chronicle
chronological record of events
Satirical comedy ironic and sarcastic comedy deriding and denouncing human
vice
Memory monologue monologue about what the speaking voice remembers
Tale
Novel
narrative relating the details of some real or imaginary event; story
fictitious prose narrative of considerable length and complexity
Gritty historical novel rough historical novel
("novel of formation") novelistic genre: the author
Bildungsroman presents the psychological, moral and
social shaping of the personality of the protagonist
Interconnected short stories
Interlinked short stories
description or analysis of a person or thing
Multi-viewpoint portrait
from
several
points ofexpectations
view
Novel violating
standard
novelistic
about subject matter,
Fabulation
style, temporal sequence and fusions of the everyday and fantastic
THINKS, David Lodge
Chapter 8
Arrangement of the work
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Denotative analysis
Characters
Setting
Narrative technique
Message
Language and info
Denotative analysis
The eighth chapter is arranged into four novels:
1.What
is like to be a freetail bat?
In the novel the writer tells the story of a clony of bats, and
their nocturn life. Life in the cave is unbridled, made of sex
and fun.
2.What
is like to be a Vampire bat?
In the novel the writer tells the story of what a vampire must
to do in order to survive.
3.What
is it like to be a bat?
In the novel the writer tells the story of a bat which had been
a man. in his previuos life . So the topic is the one of
transmigration of the soul.
4.What
is like to be a blind bat?
The novel tells the story of a totally blind bat; bats are usually
able to distinguish shapes, but the bat in the novel is unable
to do this any more. It does not know the reason, but he
probably feels to have been punished.
Characters
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M*rt*n Am*s
Irv*ne W*lsh
S*lm*n R*shd**
S*m**l B*ck*tt
 They do not act in
the chapter
 They are only the
author of the novels
reported in the
chapter
Setting
Uknown setting, even if maybe the teacher is reading
the works of her students in her house or may be in
the university campus.
Narrative technique
Some novels use direct speech
The narrator uses this device to
make the novels more real and
because the memories are not
often ordered in the human
mind.
There is not a particular narrative technique.
You can consider the chapter as a collection
of novels.
Message
The narrator uses the novels written by his
students to argue about the changing of the
stream of consciousness.
•I Think that the behaviour of those creatures (bats
and vampire) is a metaphor for man’s behaviour. In
the third novel the writer connects the condition of the
bats with the one of the man.
•So the comparison with bats makes us fall into a
condition of incivility, because bats show an incivil
behaviour, which if not bad for animals, it is not
suitable for men.
Language and info
Reading the seventh chapter we learnt some new words:
1.
To hang= appendere/attaccare
2.
To wink= battere le palpebre
3.
To squeak= guaire, squittire
4.
To gobble= trangugiare
5.
To zap= eliminare
6.
Fruitfly= piccola mosca
7.
Crevice= fessura, crepa
8.
Eaves= cornicione
9.
Ceiling= soffitto
10.
Likewise= altrettanto
11.
Faulty= difettoso
12.
Blip= puntino, segnale sonoro
13.
Pedestal= basamento
14.
Basin= bacinella
15.
Stain-less= senza macchia
16.
Lured= adescato
THINKS, David Lodge
Chapter 9
• Denotative anylisis
• Narrative tecnique
• Characters
• Message
• Setting
•New Language and Info I
Learnt
Denotative analysis
Helen, Ralph and his family are having a
conversation in the hot tub in the black garden of
Messengers’ country cottage.
They are talking about the self-consciousness
that we are mortal.
Everybody climbed out of the pool and ascended
the woodebn steps that lead the rear of the
house execpt Helen and Ralph: in a dark angle of
the staircase he detained her with hand on her
arm and kissed her lips.
She didn’t resist.
Characters
• Ralph Messenger (professor and director of the
prestigious Holt Belling Centre for Cognitive
Science)
• Helen Reed (a novelist writer)
• Carrie Messenger (Ralph’s wife)
• Mark (Ralph and Carrie’s kid)
• Simon (Ralph and Carrie’s kid)
• Emily (Ralph and Carrie’s kid)
Setting
The hot tub in the black garden of the Messenger’s
country cottage.
Narrative tecnique
The events are narrated by a external narrator
and there are some dialogues that explain the
point of view of the characters.
Message
The protagonists are discussing if it is possibile know
other’s thoughts.
Helen represent the points of view of literature while and
Ralph represent science.
Helen support that it is possible only in literature
because there can be a omniscient narrator able to
make us know what the character thinks and how
he/she thinks.
New Language and Info I Learnt
• What is it like to be a bat: Nagel's classic "What is it like to
be a bat?" must be one of the most influential papers on
consciousness of the last century, and it's still very relevant.
• Thermostat Lloyd: he thinks that the thermostat does very
well as a model of consciousness.
• Pan-psychism: Panpsichismo è un concetto appartenente
all'ambito filosofico.
Esso ritiene che tutti gli esseri, viventi e non viventi
posseggano delle capacità psichiche. Hanno inserito concetti
panpsichici nelle loro dottrine Talete, Platone, Bernardino
Telesio, Tommaso Campanella.
• You' ll catch your death of cold: slang,
letteralmente “Il freddo cattura la tua morte”.
• I don’t really buy myself: slang,
abboccare.
• Whiff: in questo caso, ventata.
• Keen: entusiasta.
• She turs to address Ralph: rigirare la domanda.
• Crossword: parole crociate.
• the ground slopes: la pendenza del suolo.
• steeply: ripidamente.
• the rear of the house: il retro della casa.
• timber balcony: balcone di legno.
• mezzanine deck: terrazzino in mezzanino.
• surface: superficie.
• bench: panchina.
• hip to hip: fianco a fianco.
• to grant: concedere.
• Descartes: Cartesio.
• state-of-art: punto del lavoro.
• to shrug: non dare peso.
THINKS, David Lodge
Chapter 10
• Denotative anylisis
• Narrative tecnique
• Characters
• Message
• Setting
• New Language and Info I
Learnt
Denotative analysis
Helen is reading the students’ work-in-progress but she is
thinking about the kiss given her by Ralph and after, about the
debate having with him too.
The were discussing on the existence, or not the existence, of
the soul and she starts to think to Martin, her husband, who is
died.
Helen is thinking too about how she can be a friend of Carrie
and how she can help her with her novel.
She ask herself where courage come from or if it is only sense
of guilty.
Characters
• Ralph Messenger (professor and director of the
prestigious Holt Belling Centre for Cognitive
Science)
• Helen Reed (a novelist writer)
• Carrie Messenger(Ralph’s wife)
• Martin (Helen’s husband)
• Lucy (Martin’s daughter)
• Joanna (Martin’s sister)
Setting
The concrete setting is Helen’s house but in her mind he
travel with tought and we can see the story setting in
the Messenger’s country cottage, in Helen’s house too
when Martin was alive, in the Curch where was
celebrated Martin’s funeral and the place where took
place the party in Martin’s honor (they are all feedback).
Narrative technique
The events are narrated in first person by Heln Reed in
her diary day by day.
Message
Human are the only animal on th earth that are
concious they will die and tey making stories to win
the fear of death.
People have a soul. Is it indipendent from body? Can it
life for eternity? Where can it life?
In the mind of those who knew that person.
But those mind and memories are themselves
allegedly constructs, fictions, tied to decaying brain
cells, doomed to eventual extinction too.
Another Message
Helen in her diary writes:
Here is Messenger family simulates the life of English
country folk for one or two days a week (…)
It is interessant the use of verb simulates.
As a matter of fact the simulates the perfect happy family.
Ralph is a faithfull pater familias who get carreer and
dedicates himself to work but when he’s home he passes
his time with family.
Carrie is a perfect wife and mother and she makes other
find everything prepareted for better
But we know trough the Helen’s diary and Ralph’s stream
of conciousness that when Ralph isn’t with family he is
other from what he shows.
Probably his friends, his collegues and his wife doesn’t
recognize him.
New Language and Info I Learnt
• it never crossed my mind: non mi passò mai per la
mente.
• debate: dibattito.
• to slap: schiaffeggiare.
• to twanged: far vibrare.
• harp: arpa.
• to pluck: in questo caso, pizzicata (riferimento
alle corde dell’arpa).
• to feel moistly aroused: sentirsi umidamente
eccitato.
• to hush: fare silenzio.
• wisteria: glicine.
• mellow: generoso, dolce, maturo, caldo.
• to dripp: gocciolare.
• mauve blossom: malva in fiore.
• raftered ceilings: soffitto con travi.
• bumpy flagged: floorattenzione pavimento
bagnato.
• rugs: tappeti.
• needless: inutile.
• half-belief: mezza convinzione.
• merely: solamente.
• the flicker of a eyelid: tremore della palpebra.
• slightest: il più leggero.
• nevertheless: tuttavia.
• earthquakes: terremoti.
• to shed: togliere, disfarsi.
• venue: luogo.
• make an habit of it: farci l’abitudine.
• nowhere: in nessun posto.
• dammit: accidenti.
• to shit themselves: fregare se stessi.
• to nisff : annusare.
• to be distressed : essere in ansia.
• queer : strano, bizzarro.
• pollution : inquinamento.
• self-exposure : esporsi.
• overty: apertamente.
• overheated: surriscaldato.
• cheerless: triste, tetro.
• to endure: sopportare.
• at stake: in posta, in gioco.
• to be worn on: trascorrere in maniera noisa.
• feasible: fattibile, probabile.