Page 31 - Point 5 Literature Program Option 1 Teachers Guide (2) (1)

everything (He ran everything …), and show off his knowledge, thus earning the nickname of
mr. know all – not a compliment, as we now see. we are also led to understand that he is
quite insensitive to what other people feel and always has to win every argument. There are
many adjectives used to describe mr. kelada and how much he talks. These words appear in the
Key Vocabulary lists in the Student’s Coursebook. He tires everyone out and the only one who
chooses to argue with him is one of his dinner companions – the equally dogmatic ramsay. on
such cruises, dinners were very formal – people were assigned a dinner table and sat together
every evening.

The focus shifts away from mr. kelada to two minor but still important characters – the burly,
unattractive american, mr. ramsay, and his wife, whom the narrator describes condescendingly
as a pretty little thing, with pleasant manners and a sense of humour.

Part III
The story moves towards a climax by focusing on one particular evening’s discussion about
pearls and the competition that the newly-developed cultured pearl industry would create for
the valuable market of genuine pearls. we find out unexpectedly that this is a field in which
mr. kelada really does have expertise. mrs. ramsay is caught in the middle of the dialogue, an
argument between Mr. Kelada and Ramsay. Mr. Kelada claims that the value of Mrs. Ramsay’s
chain of pearls is between $15,000 and $30,000 – an enormous sum of money in those days.
Since ramsay believes the pearls to be worthless, he makes the bet. a careful look at mrs.
Ramsay’s reactions and efforts to stop the bet foreshadows a problem: … in her modest way …
slipped the chain inside her dress, … you can’t bet on a certainty, But how can it be proved?, Mrs.
Ramsay hesitated a moment. The situation is now very tense.

Once Mr. Kelada sees Mrs. Ramsay’s terrified face, he grasps the whole situation, that Mrs.
ramsay had an admirer while her husband was away. He has to make a swift decision: whether
to prove himself right as always – to continue to be the ‘know-all’ he is so proud of being –
or to be a gentleman in the best British tradition and let himself be made a fool of in order
to preserve Mrs. Ramsay’s honor. The fact that this is not an easy choice is evident from the
narrator’s comments: He flushed deeply. You could almost see the effort he was making over himself,
and I noticed Mr. Kelada’s hands were trembling.

In the resolution to the story, Mrs. Ramsay anonymously returns the $100 bet and the narrator
is forced to change his opinion of mr. kelada. At that moment I did not entirely dislike Mr.
Kelada. It turns out that Mr. Kelada was indeed a ‘know-all’ not only in facts and figures, but
also of human nature, despite the fact that earlier he had seemed not to notice other people’s
feelings towards him. He also knew what the ‘proper behavior’ in such a situation was, just as
well as, if not better than, our stereotypical Englishman – the narrator. The narrator tries to
stereotype mr. kelada, but is in fact a stereotype himself – a typical upper class Englishman,
with all the snobbery and assumptions we expect of that kind of person. The fact that he is a
stereotype is further reinforced by the fact that we are never told his name.
In addition to the irony of mr. kelada presenting himself as English, there is further irony
during the bet. The narrator, who thinks that only the English know how to behave properly,
and has been nothing but critical of mr. kelada, suddenly grasps that there is a problem: I had

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