Romulus My Father

Romulus, My Father

by Raimond Gaita

Teaching notes prepared for VATE members by Bev Rangott

CONTENTS

|1. |Introduction |Page | 1 |
|2. |Ways into the text |Page | 3 |
|3. |Summary of the text |Page | 5 |
|4. |A perspective on the text |Page | 9 |
|5. |Character, style and setting |Page |11 |
|6. |A guided approach to selected passages |Page |18 |
|7. |Activities for exploring the text |Page |20 |
|8. |References |Page |23 |
| |Appendix 1: Chronology of events
It does so in such a way as to allow the reader to begin to understand the horror of the experience and the devastation these afflictions wrought on the sufferers and their loved ones, without reducing the people concerned to mere victims. We do not just see Romulus, Christine and Vacek, condescendingly, as pitiable people –although of course, they are to be pitied. They do not have control of their destinies. Their fates are the stuff of Greek tragedy in a domestic setting. This is because Greek tragedy speaks truthfully to us about the complexities of the human condition, and the elements of Greek tragedy are present in the contradictory and often fraught lives of the people depicted in this