Analysis of the Extract from "Angel Pavement" by J.Priestly.

John Boynton Priestley, OM (13 September 1894 – 14 August 1984), known as J.B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 27 novels. Angel Pavement is his novel, published in 1930, it established him as a successful novelist. It is a social panorama of the city of London, seen largely through the eyes of the employees of the firm Twigg & Dersingham, on the first floor of No. 8, Angel Pavement. One of the problems raised in the novel is the problem of upbringing. The plot of the extract revolves around Mr. Smeeth and his speculations about his own family. The central idea of the extract is misunderstanding between two generations. The author’s message is that many parents could not understand either intentions or system of values of their children. The key of the extract is dramatic. It could be divided into two parts- the “dialogue” part and the “speculations” part. First part begins with a dialogue, which presents us a picture of an ordinary family: the mother making some dish, the father helps her, their daughter sits and watches them. Everything seems to be fine and clear. But the second part reveals the true situation in that seem-to-be-ordinary family. It begins with the impatient grunt of Mr. Smeeth, he is upset by his daughter. Once he was fond of her, but now he is irritated. The usage of detached construction “and, for that matter, he was still fond of her” sets some border between her childhood and adolescence. He is not satisfied by her “way of acting, of looking, of talking”, by this enumeration, the author describes almost every situation of their life. Speaking about the language of the author, if we compare it to the language he used in “Dangerous Corner” – it is different. He uses such epithets to draw the portrait of Edna: “smallish girl, greyish-greenish-bluish eyes, prettyish” and they point out that she wasn’t a complete human, according to these epithets she was still in development. The