Irish stew

Jerome Klapka Jerome (2 May 1859 – 14 June 1927) was an English writer and humorist, best known for the humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat. Jerome was born in Caldmore, Walsall, England, and was brought up in poverty in London. His main genre is humour. Other works include the essay collections Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow; Three Men on the Bummel, a sequel to Three Men in a Boat; and several other novels.
This is an extract from his novel Three Men in a Boat. It describes a small village called Sonning which they had passed through during their river-trip. Then the three men found a place near the village to put up for the night. Since they had time till nightfall they decided to make an Irish stew. First, they started to peel the potatoes, which turned out to be an undertaking. Then a cabbage and half a peck of peas were put in the pot. Finally, they gathered all odds and ends and remnants of their food which included such things as half a pork pie and a tin of potted salmon. All these ingredients were put in the pot and stirred thoroughly. After a while their dog turned up with a dead water-rat in his mouth. After some arguments between the three men the rat was added to the stew as well. The dish in the long run turned out to be "fresh" and "piquant" and what’s also important nourishing.
To my mind, the author tries to point out that some sorts of actions which seem to look rather odd in everyday life turn out to be helpful under certain circumstances. For instance, lack of normal ingredients appears as rather a problem in the text, but the resource shown by the three men helped them to cope with the task of making a praiseworthy supper.
The message seems to be positively transparent here. When you face an obstacle it’s always up to you which sort of option you are going to use in order to solve the problem. And sometimes your daring if it is forceful might help you to find a very non-standard but efficient solution.
This is a 1st-person humorous narration with some descriptive passages (Sonning). The main mood of the extract is cheerful and one might almost say skittish.
Due to rectilineal narration and its logic the composition of the extract might look as follows:
1.Coming to sweet Sonning and further put up for the night and the decision of making an Irish stew.
2.
- Difficulties with the potatoes peeling
-The overhaul of all the food remnants and their stirring in the pot
- Montmorency’s contribution and further discussion as to whether the rat should go in or not.
3. Harris’s sarcastic but weighty argument about people who hamper world’s progress by having chosen the safe side to be on, settles the matter.
4. A great success in the end.
The description of Sonning is very vivid. There are a lot of epithets here:’’splendid’’, ’’fairy-like’’, a metaphor “smothered in roses” so the image of a really beautiful village I would like to visit is performed. To point out the meagre food supply the author uses an idiom “odds and ends” . The author uses exaggeration “It’s men such as you that hamper the world’s progress’’ and contrast ‘’...as for the gravy,it was a poem-a little too rich, perhaps, for a week stomach, but nutritious’’. To me the campsite pot, filled up with so many different ingredients, seems to be a metaphor for the idea of a collective way of solving a problem by everyone proposing various options.
The narration is very optimistic in general. Readers are put in the atmosphere of a calm evening spent on fresh air with friends. Some practical advices of cooking included. Reading is positively entertaining and inspired me on reading the whole novel.