The Changeling - Robin Jenkins - Flashcards in A Level and IB English

amusement, like suffering, must never be shown

CHAPTER 1 - Tom doesn't laugh at the strange noises Charlie makes when he is thinking about taking him on holiday.

1 of 49

the experience might give the boy some support in the battle which he has constantly to wage against corruption

CHAPTER 1 - Charlie's reason he gives to Mr Fisher, the headmaster, for wanting to take Tom on holiday.

2 of 49

If there is to be salvation there must be sacrifice.

CHAPTER 1 - Charlie argues against Mr Fisher, the head master, when he says that they could send Tom to an institutional holiday home over summer instead of going on holiday with Charlie.

3 of 49

Because of corrupting influences, surely. It's those influences I hope to save him from.

CHAPTER 2 - When Charlie is trying to convince Mary to take Tom away, Mary says she doesn't want Tom with them because he is a thief.

4 of 49

Never to whine; to accept what came; to wait for better; to take what you could; to let no one, not even yourself, know how near to giving in you were; these were his principles by which he lived.

CHAPTER 3 - Tom admires a cat in Donaldsons Court who he feed because it has similar survival instincts and principals to him.

5 of 49

Molly... was the only creature Tom feared... because she had once been a chuckling baby whom he had liked to push about in a battered pram.

CHAPTER 3 - Tom is describing his family and his little sister.

6 of 49

... subdued that treacherous weakness. Not to give in had been his pride, his faith, his sustenance, and so far it had not failed him.

CHAPTER 4 - Tom is unable to climb the fence to get into the school to steal the photograph money so he forces down his emotions to get on with the job.

7 of 49

To Todd it indicated a depth of insolence, to Forbes indomitably.

CHAPTER 5 - Tom smiles as he is brought into be questioned for stealing by Mr Fisher, Todd and Charlie.

8 of 49

Tom knew he would have to watch carefully this girl... she would try to worry all his secrets out of him.

CHAPTER 6 - Gillian is interrogating Tom about his rowing capabilities.

9 of 49

Without doubt, at the very back of his mind from the very beginning had been the hope that his befriending of this slum delinquent child might reach the ears of authority.

CHAPTER 7 - Charlie admits to himself the reason for bringing Tom away, on the train to Towellan, which many others have hinted at including Todd.

10 of 49

The danger lay in falling into resentment against Tom Curdie, in seeing the boy's admirable reticence as some kind of sinister senile composure, such as was shown by the changeling of Highland legend, that creature introduced by the malevolent...

folk of the other world into a man's house, to pollute the joy and faith of the family. CHAPTER 7 - Charlie is thinking on the train to Towellan that he doesn't want to end up hating Tom for changing the family dynamic.

11 of 49

Mary thought she detected in the smile amusement at her husband's extravagance; she pardoned it for she also thought she saw affection, rather touching on so guarded and precocious a face.

CHAPTER 7 - Mary see's Tom smile on the boat at Charlie's romantic view on life.

12 of 49

here he was arrived in his kingdom, where regret, humiliation, mercenariness, and failure, did not exist.

CHAPTER 8 - Charlie is in a good mood because he is back in Towellan.

13 of 49

... looking so much like father and son that as Mary saw them she couldn't help feeling jealous on behalf of her own son... Curdie would have to be watched carefully, otherwise he would steal what belonged to Alistair and Gillian.

CHAPTER 8 - Mary see's Tom and Charlie in the garden together when they first arrive in Towellan.

14 of 49

That's what your here for, after all, to find your childhood.

CHAPTER 9 - Charlie says to Tom the first morning, when Tom follows him onto the beach when he is fishing, to spend more time with Alistair and Gillian rather than with Charlie.

15 of 49

Yet grudgingly she admired him. Stoicism in the suffering of pain was to her one of the greatest virtues.

CHAPTER 9 - Gillian is impressed when Tom doesn't get upset by his ant bites when they take a break when walking up to Towellan Castle and Tom accidentally sits on a pile of moss with ants in it.

16 of 49

he had read that these rabbits ought to be put out of their misery, and he had approved. Here was a chance to practise that stern humanitarianism... But here was putrescence, which would defile the hand forever.

CHAPTER 9 - Charlie is unable to humanly kill the rabbit with myxomatosis, at Towellan Castle, with a quick hit to the back of the neck because he doesn't want to get his hands dirty.

17 of 49

It was Tom Curdie who came forward, lifted the stone, and bending over the rabbit struck it several times with surgical coolness and accuracy. Only when it lay utterly still did he drop the bloody and messy stone. Nor did he let it drop anyhow. He...

placed it so that it covered as much of the dead creature as possible. CHAPTER 9 - Charlie only halfway kills the rabbit by hitting it with a stone, so Tom kills it all the way.

18 of 49

It seemed to him that Tom's questions on the subject of fish and fishing were asked not out of boyish interest, but rather out of the changeling's triumph at having so soon parted the family. Such an impression was of course absurd and unjust, but...

it kept persisting all that evening. CHAPTER 9 - Charlie and Tom go fishing on their own and Charlie becomes suspicious of Tom.

19 of 49

You must let your heart thaw, Tom, if we're going to be able to help you... In the darkness he could not see that the boy was trembling and biting his lips. If it had been daylight and he could have seen those signs of physical distress, he would...

not have known what caused them. CHAPTER 9 - After Tom and Charlie go fishing Charlie tells Tom to open up.

20 of 49

Tom knew very well, perhaps better than Forbes himself, what was meant by letting his heart thaw, because it was beginning to thaw, against his wish, threatening his whole carefully built-up system of self-sufficiency.

CHAPTER 9 - Charlie tells Tom to open up after they go fishing, but he doesn't want to even though he is starting to.

21 of 49

Forbes, whom he had intended to despise and cheat, he now found himself liking, more than liking, yearning for, so that he could scarcely bear the teacher to be out of his sight.

CHAPTER 9 - After going fishing together, Tom realises that he doesn't hate Charlie and that he really likes him.

22 of 49

All the time, too, he had to remember that he would have to go back to Donaldson's Court, and if he went back with his heart thawed by too much love for these people, and with his independence therefore destroyed by them, he would become as lost...

as Peerie or Chick or his brother Alec. CHAPTER 9 - After going fishing with Charlie Tom recognises that his heart is thawing which is bad because when he goes home he won't be able to cope.

23 of 49

... his smile was by no means conceited or confident or proud; nor was it a today's smile. It seemed to her to have hidden behind it a great deal of anxiety and unhappiness. Perhaps, then, this was the boy's true state all the time; his reserve...

and reticence did not, as she had though, conceal slyness and deceit. She would have to try yo be warmer towards him. CHAPTER 10 - Tom smiles at the family after he sings well in a competition for children and Mary thinks she see's behind his mask.

24 of 49

She began to realise that this amour, of calmness and patience, forged somehow in the dreadful slum where he had been born, must be heavy and painful to wear.

CHAPTER 11 - Tom gives a broach to Mary as a gift and Gillian realises that he isn't a horrible thief.

25 of 49

He could no longer deny that his... championing of the meek and oppressed against such as Todd, had been insincere... his Samaritan succouring of Tom Curdie had been motivated by an intricacy of selfish hopes.

CHAPTER 12 - Mary tells Charlie about Tom stealing and Charlie admits to himself why he brought Tom away.

26 of 49

We'll send him home tomorrow, and then we'll be able to forget the whole unhappy business.

CHAPTER 12 - Mary says to Charlie that Gillian withdrew her statement about Tom stealing and is apologising to Charlie angrily.

27 of 49

Tom had stolen the tin-opener... to destroy the delusion growing in his mind that Mr and Mrs Forbes were his parents, Alistair his brother and Gillian his sister, and that his home was their house in the avenue of gardens.

CHAPTER 13 - Tom says to himself why he stole.

28 of 49

So when in Woolworth's he had picked up the tin-opener and the ointment, it had been as an acceptance of reality.

CHAPTER 13 - A man running the children's competition Tom had sung in thought that Tom was part of the Forbes family.

29 of 49

He had longed to touch it, but that shy gesture could not satisfy the sudden surge of love in him, so that he crushed his face into the coat...

CHAPTER 13 - Charlie sends Tom out of the room to talk to Mary about Tom's stealing, Tom pushes his face into Charlie's old raincoat in the hallway.

30 of 49

Forbes was left glaring miserably out at him... 'Changeling,' he muttered. 'Changeling.'

CHAPTER 13 - Charlie opens the door into the hallway, after arguing with Mary about Toms stealing, and Toms asks to borrow the bike and Mary shouts at him because she thinks he only wants to use it because Gillian wants to.

31 of 49

The people whose company he had enjoyed were now remoter than ever; the assurance of kinship had been taken away.

CHAPTER 14 - Tom looks up the definition of Changeling in a dictionary in the library in Dunroth and then feels apart from the strangers who he felt good being around.

32 of 49

'Whit's the matter wi Tom?' he asked. 'He'll no talk to us. He's different.'

CHAPTER 14 - Peerie and Chick arrive in Dunroth and meet Tom, Peerie says to Chick that Tom has changed because Tom keeps his distance from them.

33 of 49

The connection between him and the Forbes family was broken, and could never be joined again... whatever happened to him, he could not go back to his old life, he had left Donaldson's Court for ever.

CHAPTER 15 - Tom leaves Chick and Peerie to run to the phone box to return to the Forbes cottage and he admits to himself that he belongs nowhere.

34 of 49

between Gillian and this strange boy had grown a relationship which must either be quite dissolved or else made comprehensible before he left them for good.

CHAPTER 16 - Mary says to Charlie not to send Tom home tomorrow because Gillian and Tom have a bond and it would make her moody for the rest of the holiday.

35 of 49

... a failed experiment.

CHAPTER 16 - Charlie says to Mary not to be upset about not being able to help Tom and sending him home early.

36 of 49

he wondered if this boy in the clean jerkin and khaki shorts really was Tom Curdie who lived beside him in Donaldson's Court in Glasgow, and who for years had been kind to him.

CHAPTER 17 - Peerie doesn't recognise Tom on the ferry to Rothsay because Tom is ignoring him and he has changed.

37 of 49

There was no doubt he had not made the imaginative effort necessary to appreciate Tom's difficulties in resisting his environment... he hadn't made that effort because he could not; his compassion was academic, as Todd had said, not creative; and...

his love was cowardly." CHAPTER 18 - Charlie is annoyed that Peerie is following them and Mary asks him if he thought that by taking Tom away he had cut all Tom's ties to Donaldson's Court. Charlie realises he lacks the empathy to think so deeply.

38 of 49

"Where had I to go?" The question astonished Forbes, especially as it didn't seem to be asked of him in particular; it was just breathed out to the air.

CHAPTER 18 - Charlie tells Tom he has to go home, after 1 week away, when they are in Rothsay and says it's because Mrs Storrocks friend is coming.

39 of 49

her triumph vanished... and in its place was a feeling of profound complicity with Tom. She knew now why he had stolen the tin-opener and ointment, and why he could not speak to Peerie... it was her turn to feel tears in her eyes... wondering in...

what way she could help him. CHAPTER 18 - Gillian breaks Tom mocking him about Peerie and his lack of emotion and feels bad about it when she understands Tom on the bus away from Canada Hill in Rothsay.

40 of 49

He seemed to her under some kind of doom, and although she felt she would have risked her life to help him his danger was such that no sacrifice on her part would be of any use.

CHAPTER 19 - Gillian apologises to Tom on the boat from Rothsay to Towellan as she is sorry for trying to break him as she now understand him.

41 of 49

there was no way really by which the turmoil of despair within him could be stilled.

CHAPTER 19 - Gillian see's that it's impossible to help Tom on the boat from Rothsay to Towellan.

42 of 49

his eyes, wishing desperately to achieve their old impassiveness, could not.

CHAPTER 20 - Tom's family come to Towellan and Charlie asks Tom about his family. Tom can't push down his emotion for his family anymore.

43 of 49

here was the opportunity for a grand Samaritan gesture... But it could not be... his heart was of ordinary size, compassion and quality...

CHAPTER 20 - Charlie wants to let the Curdie's stay in their home for the night in their beds so that he seems generous, but he understand he can't because he isn't that compassionate.

44 of 49

He had already suspected that by bringing Tom to Towellan he had, inexplicably, done the boy more harm that good; now this self-induced injury was no doubt the outwards sign of that harm. But what dreadful spiritual stress had been responsible he...

did not know, and did not really want to know. CHAPTER 21 - Charlie is cleaning the cuts Tom gave himself on his hand by punching a tree and see's that he hasn't helped him by taking his away.

45 of 49

'Did you,' she asked, 'did you steal those things in Woolworth's because- because you didn't want- to get- too fond of us?'

CHAPTER 22 - Tom and Gillian run away from the police and Gillian shows that she understand why Tom stole to him.

46 of 49

It was impossible for him to stay with her family always, and it seemed to her no less impossible for him to return to Donaldson's Court with his own family; there was nowhere she could advise him to go.

CHAPTER 22 - Gillian see's that running away with Tom is pointless as there's nowhere for him to stay permanently.

47 of 49

his patience and silence as he sat on the bucket... and his face glimmering like the skull they had passed on the hill.

CHAPTER 22 - Gillian and Tom arrive at the shepherds hut and Gillian can see that Tom is defeated.

48 of 49

sky and sea and hills were dark...

CHAPTER 22 - Gillian leaves the hut after trying to save Tom from suicide.

49 of 49

Get Revising

The Changeling - Robin Jenkins

Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

Back

Card 3

Front

Back

Card 4

Front

Back

Card 5

Front

Back

Comments

Similar English resources: