“Perhaps of all the creations of man, language is the most astonishing.”

Lytton Strachey

Language is the most amazing, and the most useful creation of a man. It is an important tool that people use in their every day life. It is a tool which makes it possible for people to get information, to exchange experiences and knowledge, and even to get information from the ancestors. The society cannot exist without language, as it fulfils people’s primary need – communication.

To speak a language is one of the most basic parts of people’s identity. With the help of language, one learns about his/her culture, country, nation. From century to century, language helped people to leave messages to descendants, due to which nowadays people know the history of society development, and many other important things. In different times, the messages were transferred  differently: by signs, pictures, hieroglyphs, runes, and were written on  different materials. However, all this was a kind of language, which has been keeping and transferring information up to nowadays.

The transfer of information remained one of the most essential parts of life till now. Therefore, communication takes 70 per cent of people’s life. The society cannot live properly without language and communication, as 99 per cent of human activity stopped if the language did not exist. People need to communicate in order to live together, to work together, to make families and friends, to transmit information to next generations.

By means of language people are able to express their feelings, emotions, impressions, thoughts. It helps people to cooperate, to exist in the same space, so to say. Due to language people discuss things, debate, argue, reach agreement. It is really difficult to imagine a silent society, that cannot read and write, and even having no idea about gestures and expressions, that is about body language.

So, everything in the life, every step a man takes is connected with language. Even if a  person does not use language in oral communication, he/she has to interpret or decipher the signs he/she is surrounded with: inscriptions on the doors, advertisements, announcements, signs on the roads, instructions for different appliances and so on. It is evident that language accompanies people through all their life. And it is more easier to imagine life without computers , telephones, cars, television than without a language. For sure, language is the most astonishing and valuable creation, that people are very lucky to possess. 

“Perhaps of all the creations of man, language is the most astonishing.”

Lytton Strachey

Every day, without reflecting, people utter a lot of different words, simple, difficult, beautiful, or figurative. Every day people use thousands of words, as naturally, as they brief, walk, sleep, eat. Words in their turn, which are put in certain order, make word combinations, phrases, texts. Words as though build their own world. A world that is called “language”. Unfortunately, very rarely somebody ponders that language is the best creation a man ever made, which fulfils one of man’s primary needs- communication.

 Communication is the base of everything people do. The whole man’s life is to some extent connected with communication. Seventy per cent of people’s life consists of communication. It became possible with appearance of language. Language is closely connected with man’s thinking. Thus, using thinking and language people are able to communicate in order to live together, work together, make friends and families, and transmit information from generation to generation. It is hardly possible to live without knowing a language.

Each invention that exists in modern world partially appeared due to language. Why? Because in order to produce something new people need to cooperate. Due to language, people can discuss this or that, debate and reach agreement. Moreover, all those modern inventions are useless without language. In order to use things it is necessary to know language. For example, what a man can do with a computer if he/she does not know the language? Or, simply, in order to use any new appliance one has to read instructions to it. So, almost every action, every step in one’s life is connected with usage of language.

Language is a tool that a man uses day by day. It is very easy to imagine life without computers, telephones, cars, television. However, it is impossible to imagine life without a language. Humans cannot exist without language and speech.

So, language really is the most astonishing and valuable creation, that accompany people through all their life. It is the inexhaustible wealth that people are lucky to possess.

Cat in the Rain (2)

Ernest Hemingway’s “Cat in the Rain” is a short story which describes misunderstanding and indifference in a relationship between a man and a woman.

At first glance, this is a simple story about a couple who travels together to Italy and enjoy spending time together. In fact, the author gives some prompts which prove how these people are unhappy together.

To begin with, the mood of the story itself is sad. The author often repeats that it is raining: “It was raining. The rain dripped from the palm trees. The sea line broke in a long line in the rain…”  It creates the atmosphere of sadness and unhappiness.

Almost the whole action takes place in the room. Probably the author in such a way wants to emphasize that this couple is not interested in anything. Although they are travelling it seems that most of the time they spend in the room, each doing his/her business. The most indifferent to that what happens around is the husband. When the author writes about the husband he mentions his position in the room: “her husband offered from the bed”, “lying propped up with the two pillows at the foot of the bed”. George feels comfortable in his world, in the bed with a book, whereas his wife is ready to go under a heavy rain to get the cat. They are too different. Moreover, the author shows the wife’s interest towards another character of the story, the hotel-keeper: “The wife liked him. She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints. She liked his dignity. She liked the way he felt about being a hotel-keeper. She liked his old, heavy face and big hands.” So many “she liked”, but focused on absolutely strange man. Not a single “she liked” for her husband. It proves the wife was not happy with her husband.

The author does not describe the characters directly. So the reader can characterize them from the point of view of their behavior and dialogues.

As to the title, “cat” is a symbol. On the one hand it is a symbol of wife’s loneliness. The cat was sitting alone in the rain, lonely and helpless, like the wife probably felt in her marriage. On the other hand it symbolizes wife’s desires. She repeats: “I wanted it so much. I wanted that poor kitty”. And then she says: “And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes.” I think the cat and all these things she wants are connected. Well, a cat is often associated with home and cosiness. And probably the wife missed it in her relationship with husband. That’s why the author repeats that the wife wants that cat so much.

So, in order to understand this short story the reader has to read between the lines. Only in this way the reader is able to understand that in fact this story is about lonely people, for who is difficult to find a person which would be similar to them.