First Mandatory Task (of Four)

Your first task: read the short story, “P & O” (1926), written by W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965).

You can access Maugham’s short short by clicking the icon above or, alternatively, the link here. The title, “P & O,” refers to the London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, which in the nineteenth century constituted one of the main shippers of goods and passengers across the British Empire. By the turn from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, that empire (depicted in pink on world maps) controlled roughly a quarter of the earth’s land surface and a quarter of its population. In Maugham’s tale, the Irish protagonist, Gallagher (gall = “stranger”), boards a rattly P&O liner in Singapore to travel back to Europe. He intends to reside permanently in his native County Galway, Ireland, having been the long-term manager of a rubber plantation in the Federated Malay States (FMS), a British rubber- and tin-producing colony north of Singapore. During the voyage, he befriends an Englishwoman, Mrs. Hamlyn, whose name may suggest Shakespeare’s character, Hamlet. Little does either individual know that being on the “P & O” liner will, for Gallagher, become a question of “to be or not to be.”

Second Mandatory Task (of Four)

Your second task: listen to a podcast about Roger Casement, on whom Maugham may have based Gallagher, the protagonist of “P & O.” Maugham’s fiction features only a few Irish characters, some others being Robert O’Donnell, a Latin teacher and the central figure in the 1904 short story “An Irish Gentleman,” and O’Malley, a painter in the 1928 short story “His Excellency.”

On March 18, 2016, RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcaster, presented (as an episode in its Documentary on One series) a study of Roger Casement’s humanitarian activities among and behalf of native laborers in the Congo and Peru. The piece also considered his engagement with Irish physical-force nationalism in the run-up to the Easter 1916 Rising. It is available as a podcast: click the icon immediately above, or else click here. (We may have an in-class quiz about the podcast.)

Born in Dublin, Ireland, on September 1, 1864, to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother, Roger David Casement became orphaned and, at age 15, initiated a career with a shipping company. As time progressed, he entered the British diplomatic service in West Africa, where he met Joseph Conrad, who would use data supplied by Casement when writing the short, influential novel, Heart of Darkness. As a result of his efforts as a consul (or diplomat) in the Congo and, later, Peru, Casement gained international renown as a humanitarian. Britain’s king awarded him a knighthood, rendering him Sir Roger Casement.

As factions within Ireland planned an anti-British revolution (which finally transpired at Easter 1916), Casement enthusiastically joined the effort, running guns from Germany into Ireland. After his capture by the authorities on Good Friday 1916, a complicated trial for high treason ensued, with many famous people campaigning that he be granted clemency on account of his humanitarian record. Revelations about his sex life (contained in the so-called Black Diaries) tilted matters against Casement, and on August 3, 1916, he was executed by hanging at Pentonville, a prison in London. As the sixteenth and last of the Easter 1916 Rising rebels to endure the death penalty, Casement enter the rolls of the Irish martyrs. Soon after his passing, the poet Dora Sigerson Shorter commemorated him in a lyric, “Sixteen Dead Men.” The poem’s speaker deems Casement the “Captain” among the group, which “bear[s]” proudly “[a] nation’s honor.”

Third Mandatory Task (of Four)

Your third task: study the instructional content — a written version of the lectures about Maugham’s “P & O.”

To make the lecture content abundantly clear, your instructor has created a PDF containing a written version of the multi-day presentation, plus a number of relevant images. You can access the material here: Written Account of Maugham Lecture. It is also available by clicking the gold bar immediately below.

EXAM WORDS

When preparing for your exam about this work of literature, ensure that you are fully up to speed with the following data (all of which receive explanation in the written account):

Title of short story collection in which “P&O” first appeared (all stories written by Maugham) ••• Name of work by Thomas More that posits an ideal island society ••• Christian season during which “P & O” takes place ••• Asian city in which story opens ••• How Gallagher may suggest aspects of three real-life Irish men: Oscar Wilde; Roger Casement; Michael Collins ••• Gallagher’s plan for when he returns to his native county in the west of Ireland ••• Gallagher’s cause of death ••• Two-word term used to identified Casement’s notes about his sexual encounters ••• Type of home Gallagher lived in when on the rubber plantation ••• Scottish city where the European doctor trained ••• Married woman with whom doctor carries on an affair while aboard the ship ••• Married women who befriends Gallagher on the ship; her husband has left her for an older woman ••• Part of the ship into which Mr. Price “slither[s] down” ••• Type of metal mined on a large scale in Federated Malay States; nationality of people most associated with the mining ••• British Empire: color of possessions on world maps; roughly, a quarter of earth’s land and people by 1900 ••• Name of king of Belgium who controlled The Congo and its rubber industry ••• Political movement or philosophy that causes the first-class passengers anxiety ••• What wife of Christian missionary opines about inviting second-class passengers to party ••• Battle in which cricket star Percy Jeeves was killed ••• Meaning of Irish boy’s name Aidan ••• What the gall in “Gallagher” stands for • How Irish-language word aisling may be relevant to Gallagher’s final minutes, prior to his death ••• Subaltern ••• Cockney

In face-to-face versions of the course, the attendance-mandatory lectures that your instructor delivers in the classroom convey the semester’s core content, and elements of that content will feature in exams. As for virtual versions of the course: they rely in part on audio lectures, which (for this text) follow immediately below. Students enrolled in an F2F course will certainly find the audio lectures useful, and they can treat them an optional extra. When initiating play, you may have to click several times before the file opens and the audio begins.

Fourth Mandatory Task (of Four)

Your fourth task: complete and submit — via Folio, before the deadline — the single Write Now (i.e. written homework) exercise about the focal literary text. Refer to your syllabus and/or the course Folio page to check the submission deadline. No late work is accepted.

There are 10 questions, presented in reading order. In other words: the questions chronologically track the PDFs that contain the assigned reading: W. Somerset Maugham’s short story “P & O.” When attempting the questions, it’s advisable NOT to begin with Folio but instead to: (1) download a PDF containing the 10 Write Now questions as a single document (also available via the green bar below); and then (2) answer each question-set in a Microsoft Word document, which you should save as you proceed. That way, you’ll always have proof that you completed the exercise, even if Folio goes down or otherwise doesn’t cooperate. When you have finished the entire Write Now exercise, you should review it carefully, save it again, and then submit it via Folio — either as a Microsoft Word document or a PDF — before the firm deadline. The ability to submit ceases at that time, and effort not received before the deadline earns a grade of zero. Another way of saying the above: late submission isn’t possible. Remember, please, that your grade depends not just on correct responses but also: complete sentences; good grammar; accurate spelling; and clear expression.

Please be very mindful of the following statements, which appear on the course syllabus.

Do your own work. Students may not collaborate on the production of responses to Write Now quizzes (i.e. homework exercises). When grading, we pay close attention to similarities between submissions. A student found to have copied or otherwise relied on another student’s work (on even one occasion) — or found to have committed plagiarism — will receive an “F” for the entire course and, in addition, will be reported to the University for a hearing that may result in suspension or expulsion from GS.