James Hilton Washington Is Situated...

James Hilton, ( ), English novelist whose popular works include Lost Horizon (1933), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1934), and Random Harvest (1941), all of which were made into highly successful motion pictures.

The son of a schoolmaster, Hilton attended Christ’s College, Cambridge (A.B., 1921), where he first began to write, contributing articles to newspapers and publishing his first novel, Catherine Herself (1920). He became a journalist and had several more of his novels published, though without conspicuous success. His novella Goodbye, Mr. Chips was published in the British Weekly in 1934 and became enormously popular after it was reprinted in the Atlantic Monthly (in the United States) that same year. Hilton’s novels Knight Without Armor and Lost Horizon, which had been published in 1933, were quickly reissued and also attracted wide readerships. In the late 1930s Hilton moved to Hollywood, where he wrote or cowrote screen scenarios (among them, that for Jan Struther’s Mrs. Miniver).

Questions and discussion 1. Why kind of point of view was adopted in this short fiction? Third-person narrative or first-person narrative? ⅰ.Third-person narrative (in which the narrator is someone who is outside the story proper who refers to all the characters in the story by name, or as “he,” “she,” “they”) ⅱ. First-person narrative (in which the narrator speaks as “I”, and is to a greater or lesser degree a participant in the story)

2. How does the author portray Mr. Leaper? How do you think the characterization is related to the story?

3. Many things have been compared between America and England. Try to find them out and discuss their significances.

4. Sometimes, while doing some task or assignment you don’t like, you can find it reminiscent of some good memories. In the story, Harrison only finished a half page of writing in an hour’s work. Do you think it is a failure in his life or a shame on him? Why or why not?

5.Use first-person narrative to tell a story based on Harrison’s American experience.