Our Author’s Image in Our
Readers’ Brains
 Who
is Katya Alexeenkova? She is a 2nd year student from Smolensk, who often writes to
“English”. I remember Katya for her eye-catching description of a winter morning in English
No. 14. It is one of those articles that make you think of the person hiding behind
the lines. So here is my vision of Katya’s personality.
In my opinion, she is a 18-year-old girl, who seems to be fragile and not very tall. She
lives alone in suburbs of Smolensk in a flat on the last floor with windows facing a
forest. That is very important, because she keeps an owl at home. Every night it flies
away towards the forest and returns early in the morning. Katya also has a hedgehog and a
black cat.
To tell the truth, Katya prefers animals to people. I don’t mean she is a recluse. She
is really easy-going. Though she makes lots of friends, there’s no one very close to
her. Her developed intuition makes other people consider her rather strange. Bulgakov’s
Margaret could have been one of her distant relatives, I think.
Being a great fan of Ireland, she has studied everything about its history and culture.
She is even fond of Irish dancing! Among her other hobbies I can pick out Celtic music,
foreign languages, reading, and writing to “English”.
Well…I’m not confident about the fact she is really like I imagine. She may be
absolutely different. That doesn’t matter much to me. I like the way she writes and…I
am about to like her.
By Anastasia Osipova, 3rd year student
So, we have the two best articles, which we enjoyed and decided to
publish as the best participants of our contest. As you remember, we asked you to describe
how you imagine our author, Katya Alexeenkova. We received a great many of letters; thanks
to all the participants. And now it’s time to announce the lucky winner, our regular
contributor – Agatha!
The real Katya is pictured on the right – admire it and read the winning articles!
When I saw the article by Katya Alexeenkova in English No. 14, I
understood that it’s true: if you see something written by a person, you can say
everything about that person. In this article Katya described one winter morning. She did
it with such great love, that I understood that her favourite season is winter.
If a person likes winter, it allows one to draw more conclusions. I think she likes pets,
but her parents wouldn’t allow her to have one. And her father even said, that if Katya
takes one, he will throw it out. But Katya decided not to accept this taboo. She wished to
have a guinea-pig, or a small cat; but in this situation she couldn’t. So she went to a
zoo and bought a crocodile. The director of the zoo was glad to give this crocodile to
Katya, because it had a bad temper and was always malicious. Now this crocodile lives in
Katya’s bathroom, and her father can’t do anything, because it is not easy to throw
out an evil crocodile. Only Katya can communicate with it, because she likes it very much,
and it likes her, too.
Her favourite activity is sitting with her pet and looking out of the window. We can say
this because her article expresses a very quiet mood, so I think she is really a
melancholic and quiet person.
She likes to listen to classical music and dancing in a classical style. Her crocodile
likes it too and very funnily nods its head in time to the music.
She likes to read. Generally she reads philosophers. Her favourite authors are Nietzsche
and Schopenhauer.
She didn’t like school. She even wished to stop going to school because her teacher of
biology said that she should give the crocodile to the school for study. She was offended
because her teacher didn’t even believe that her crocodile was shy and didn’t like the
street.
Of course, I can’t know whether this story is true, but my opinion is that it is.
By Agatha, School No. 71 graduate
|