Annales Bac L : Compréhension du texte

It seems to me now that Fanshawe was always there. He is the place where everything begins for me, and without him I would hardly know who I am.
We met before we could talk, babies crawling through the grass in diapers, and by the time we were seven we had pricked our fingers with pins and made ourselves and blood brothers for life.
Whenever I think of my childhood now, I see Fanshawe. He was the one who was with me, the one who shared my thoughts, the one I saw whenever I looked up from myself.

But that was a long time ago. We grew up, went off to different places, drifted apart. None of that is very strange, I think. Our lives carry us along in ways we cannot control, and almost nothing stays with us. It dies when we do, and death is something that happens to us every day.

Seven years ago this November, I received a letter from a woman named Sophie Fanshawe. "You don't know me," the letter began, "and I apologize for writing to you like this out of the blue. But things have happenned, and under the circumstances I don't have much choice." It turned out that she was Fanwhawe's wife. She knew that I had grown up with her husband, and she also knew that I lived in New York, since she had read many of the articles I had published in magazines.

The explanation came in the second paragraph, very bluntly, without any preamble. Fanshawe had disappeared, she wrote, and it was more than six months since she had last seen him. Not a word in all that time, not the slightest clue as to where he might be. The police had found no trace of him, and the private detective she hired to look for him had come up empty-handed. Nothing was sure, but the facts seemed to speak for themselves : Fanshawe was probably dead ; it was pointless to think he would be coming back. In the light of all this, there was something important she needed to discuss with me, and she wondered if I would agree to see her.

This letter caused a series of little shocks in me. There was too much information to absorb all at once ; too many forces were pulling me in different directions.
Out of nowhere, Fanshawe had suddenly reappeared in my life. But no sooner was his name mentioned than he had vanished again. He was married, he had been living in New York - and I knew nothing about him anymore. Selfishly, I felt hurt that he had not bothered to get in touch with me. A phone call, a postcard, a drink to catch up on old times - it would not have been difficult to arrange. But the fault was equally my own. I knew where Fanshawe's mother lived, and if I had wanted to find him, I could easily have asked her. The fact was that I had let go of fanshawe. His life had stopped the moment we went our separate ways, and he belonged to the past for me now, not to the present. He was a ghost I carried around inside me, a prehistoric figment*, a thing that was no longer real. I tried to remember the last time I had seen him, but nothing was clear. My mind wandered for several minutes and then stopped short, fixing on the day his father died. We were in high school then and could not have been more than seventeen years old.

I called Sophie Fanshawe and told her I would be glad to see her whenever it was convenient. We decided on the following day, and she sounded grateful, even though I explained to her that I had not heard from Fanshawe and had no idea where he was.

The Locked Room, Paul AUSTER (Penguin books, 1990)

* figment : a product of someone's imagination


1. What title could you give the passage ?

2. Write a short paragraph about the narrator. Illustrate with quotations from the text. (in about 20 words).

3. What memories came back to the narrator's mind when he remembered the past ? (40 words)

4. a) Place the following time indicators into chronological order on the time scale. (Write the letters in the appropriate boxes)

A - Before we could talk
B - Now
C - Seven years ago
D - This november
E - Since she had last seen him
F - On the day his father died
G - On the following day

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b) How do you explain that the author does not present the events in chronological order ? (30 words)

5. Pick out the key sentence indicating the change in the relationship between Fanshawe and the narrator and analyse the evolution in their relationship. (30 words)

6. Why did the narrrator feel hurt just after receiving the letter ? Answer in your own words and illustrate with quotations from the text. (60 words)

7. How do you interpret the narrator's comment : "The fact was that I had let go of fanshawe." ? (50 words)

8. The narrator met Sophie Fanshawe on the following day. Imagine their conversation. (150 words)

9. Answer one of the following questions (200 words)

a) "Out of sight, out of mind". Do you agree with this ?
b) In your opinion, what is a true friend ?