The Bike Essay

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ENGLISH HOMEWORK Critical Appreciation Essay The novelist Robert Jenkins has written that ‘’fiction ought to create fictional characters, in situations which are moving , and in some ways illuminating.’’ How well does a short story you have studied fit this description ? One short story where the main protagonists are extremely credible and where their characterisation is developed in such a manner as to encourage the reader to feel sympathy and understanding of their various problems is a story called ‘The Bike’ by Fred Urquhart. The story is set in an industrial ‘Red Clydeside’ town in the West of Scotland around 1921, when the real whiff of workers revolution is in the air allied to the real prospect of female emancipation as more women gain an element of independence through earning their own living and beginning to enjoy increasing political representation. The story follows a young female factory worker, Annie, in her determined quest to firstly, fulfil a long held desire to purchase a bicycle to enable her a much greater degree of mobility and freedom. Her second quest is to find romance, allied to her independent mode of transport - both of which she imagines will free her from the drudgery of her current existence. The other central character in the story is Charlie, an opinionated young Communist who works at the same wine and spirits warehouse and who has been secretly admired by Annie for some time but whom she believes would be unlikely to reciprocate her feelings for him. She spurns the ‘modern’ option of Hire Purchase and prefers to save fastidiously for years and this old fashioned virtue of thrift and patience is ridiculed by her workmates. This characterisation allows us to surmise that she is a determined young person who is happy to make the necessary sacrifices to achieve her ambitions and will not bedeflected from her purpose.
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