From R. Aldington's Novel "Death of a Hero".

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The extract under analysis is taken from R. Aldington's novel "Death of a Hero". This tiny part of his literary work is devoted to the young years of the main character, George Winterbourne. The author portrays him as a good-natured sensitive fellow with exquisite artistic taste. George is "crazy" about painting and his "unboyish" behaviour is not accepted by the society. Under its pressure the boy tries to behave "manly" and learns "to kill things". But once he kills a living being with his own hands. In order to escape the image of a dead bird which haunts him all the time Winterbourne plunges into painting deeper than ever leaving aside all the attempts to become "a thoroughly manly fellow". The extract falls into 3 logically and emotionally completed parts. The first one starts with the initial lines and ends: "...and learn to kill things?" We can entitle it in the following way: "An artist to the core". It is important to note that having no exposition the extract begins with the development. Thus the first logical part coincides with the first part of the development. The hero's nature is revealed in this part. He is an artist and perceives the world through the prism of his artistic taste. It is not by chance that here the verb "to look" is repeated four times. George has got a gift of observing the world and putting it down in "exciting patterns". He's got his own peculiar opinion and attitude towards the works of other masters which is expressed by the words naming emotions: "didn't much care for", "hated", "rather liked", "leaped at", "adored", "was quite feverish". Besides, a great amount of well-known names shows Winterbourne's education in the world of painting. His passion for painting is revealed through enumeration of the things he spent all his pocket-money on: "paints and drawing-pencils and sketch-books and oil-sketching paper and water-colour
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