The Blue Stones PDF

# The Blue Stones ## ISAK DINESEN There was once a skipper who named his ship after his wife. He had the figurehead of it beautifully carved, just like her, and the hair of it gilt. But his wife was jealous of the ship. "You think more of the figurehead than of me," she said to him. “No,” he answ...

# The Blue Stones ## ISAK DINESEN There was once a skipper who named his ship after his wife. He had the figurehead of it beautifully carved, just like her, and the hair of it gilt. But his wife was jealous of the ship. "You think more of the figurehead than of me," she said to him. “No,” he answered, "I think so highly of her because she is like you, yes, because she is you yourself. Is she not gallant, full-bosonted; does she not dance in the waves, like you at our wedding? In a way she is really even kinder to me than you are. She gallops along where I tell her to go, and she lets her long hair hang down freely, while you put yours up under a cap. But she turns her back to me, so that when I want a kiss I come home to Elsinore." Now once, when this skipper was trading at Trankebar, he chanced to help an old native king flee traitors in his own country. As they parted, the king gave him two big blue, precious stones, and these he had set into the face of his figurehead, like a pair of eyes to it. When he came home he told his wife of his adventure, and said: "Now she has your blue eyes too." "You had better give me the stones for a pair of earrings," said she. "No," he said again. "I cannot do that, and you would not ask me if you understood." ## Analyze Visuals How does the photograph of this figurehead help evoke the mood of this allegory? ## Symbolism What do you think the figurehead symbolizes? What clues in the story help you understand its symbolic meaning? ## Paraphrase Paraphrase what has happened in this allegory so far. ## Language Coach **Prefixes:** The prefix in-or im- often means "not." When this prefix appears at the beginning of a word, it often negates the meaning of the rest of the word, such as inactive, meaning "not active," or inaudible, meaning "not audible." **Reread line 24.** *What do you think is the meaning of incurable?* ## Allegory What is the literal meaning of the blue stones in this story? What is their symbolic meaning? Still the wife could not stop fretting about the blue stones, and one day, when her husband was with the skippers' corporation, she had a glazier of the town take them out, and put two bits of blue glass into the figurehead instead, and the skipper did not find out, but sailed off to Portugal. But after some time the skipper's wife found that her eyesight was growing bad, and she could not see to thread a needle. She went to a wise-woman, who gave her ointments and waters, but they did not help her and in the end the old woman shook her head, and told her that this was a rare and incurable disease, and that she was going blind. "Oh, God," the wife then cried, "that the ship was back in the harbor of Elsinore. Then I should have the glass taken out, and the jewels put back. For did he not say that they were my eyes?" But the ship did not come back. Instead the skipper's wife had a letter from the Consul of Portugal, who informed her that she had been wrecked, and gone to the bottom with all hands. And it was a very strange thing, the Consul wrote, that in broad daylight she had run straight into a tall rock, rising out of the sea.