The Go Between

A detailed Summary of The Go Between

This book is a fiction, it's a memory story: a man in his sixties looks back on his boyhood of the middle class boy recalling the events that took place on a summer visit to an aristocratic family in Norfolk in the 1900's. The author uses double narrative, the young Leo's actions told by the older Leo, and it shows us how it has affected his life First, I'll expose you the main characters, their functions and relationships, then I'll give you a small summary of the story, followed by the main themes and their symbolic elements, and finally the style of the book.

Leo Colston has two different aspects, he's the narrator of the book, a man of about sixty year old, and he's a "dried up" man inside. Leo is a young boy of the middle class. He lives alone with his mother in West Hash, a little village near Salisbury. His father was a bank gardener in Salisbury is dead, Leo thinks he was a crank, he didn't want his son to go to school but his mother always wanted him to go so as soon as he died, he went. His mother liked gossip and was very sensitive to public opinion, she needed social frame, and we can easily imagine her pleasure when her son has been invited to spend a summer to a rich friend. He has also an aunt, Charlotte, a Londone

Leslie Poles Hartley was born in 1895; he studied in Oxford and was officer in France during World War 1. He was novelist, short-story writer and critic. His reputation as a writer was established with the publication of the trilogy of novels, The Shrimp and the Anemone (1944), The Sixth Heaven (1946), and Eustace and Hilda (1947). He died in 1972. The Go-between was first published in 1953, the following year it received the Heinemann Foundation Prize of the Royal Society of Literature. Its film version was also very successful and won the principal award at the Festival de Cannes in 1973.

There are a lot of important themes in this book, the most evident is the discovery of sexuality and of the grown ups world of a teenage boy, the loss of his innocence. He is scarred sexually and emotionally by his summer experience. At the end of the book, he has turned into an emotionally hollow adult. Another main theme is past and memory, L. P. Hartley begins The Go-Between: with "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there." This book is memory like in The Glass Menagerie; it is a look through the dusty memory of a sixty years old man. Another key theme is class distinction and its warping effects upon the life of one small boy. He's from a disadvantaged family and is invited in an aristocratic family. The father and the fiance are aware of the girl's affair with the farmer, but do nothing about it. They are confident she will do the "right thing" in the end, and she does. "Why don't you marry Ted," the boy asks the young woman. "Because I can't," she replies. "Then why are you marrying Trimmington?" "Because I must." She understands, and she is tough enough to endure. Indeed, at the end of the film she turns up years later as an old lady very much in the image of her mother. An extra theme is man-woman relationships and love. Marian and Ted are in love with each other and have an ardent affair together. Lord Trimmingham probably loved her too because he married her although she was pregnant and Leo felt in love with her as soon as he saw her. The diary is a symbol of the past and of the doom that chose him that summer, it's like a pact that he signed, dreams and freshness gone for adult revelations. In the Zodiac on his diary, Leo is Mercury (virgin), messenger of the Gods, mercury also gauging the ever-rising heat of the summer, and of those passions of the adults circling aroun

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Approximate Word count = 1624
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English