Today English Speaking club was the 140 anniversary of the world renowned American novelist Theodore Dreiser.The session turned out a great success!
Our friends - native speakers from USA and UK - helped to
make this serious topic an amazing success!
Today’s session turned out to be truly international.
Besides the traditional visit by USA Peace Corp. and the British AISEC volunteers the centre was visited by the African students of Dnipropetrovsk universities.
The ESC session started with the introduction of the foreign guests and new comers. After that all the participants were given the opportunity to communicate in English. To break the ice the club members shared their opinions about the most memorable events of the week. The discussed events ranged from the Ukrainian Independence Day celebration and “Dnipro” FC game to bungee jumping over the Dnipro river.
The second part of the session was dedicated to the topic “The 140th anniversary of the Americans novelist Theodore Dreiser”.
We have read and translated an article about the biography of the novelist. Not all present were familiar with his novels. So the plots of the most popular novels were introduced and illustrated by the relevant videos.
“Sister Carrie” novel was made into a movie “Carrie” (1952) starring Jennifer Jones and Laurence Olivier.
In the Soviet Union a famous Latvian composer Raimond Pauls was inspired to create a musical with the same name. The video of the musical’s hit – Carrie’s song – was thoroughly enjoyed.
“An American Tragedy” is widely considered Dreiser's best novel and an important work of American naturalism. The novel was made into a movie “A Place in the Sun” starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. The clips from this movie raised the interest of the audience. A documentary about the Metropolitan Opera performance of “An American Tragedy” answered some questions as well.
The Trilogy of desire – “The Financier” (1912), “The Titan” (1914), and unfinished “The Stoic “(1947) – turned out to be well known by the club members with economics degrees. This work of fiction was highly recommended by the lecturers in the Ukrainian Universities. This fact was quite surprising for our foreign guests who did not know this author prior to the presentation.
Quite unexpectedly the literary topic was enjoyed by the club members. As we never disclosed the outcome of the plot in “An American Tragedy” we expect a full house at the movie Club featuring “A Place in the Sun” .
The number of participants – 26 persons.
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