How Muster-Master Stoneman Earned His Breakfast

Title: How Muster-Master Stoneman Earned His Breakfast

Source: excerpted from Tales of the Convict System, Price Warung

historical background: set in→ Victorian Age, the time of colonization and discoveries (the British Empire) → the time of Industrial Revolution → development of steel and steam engines and railway → great poverty → crime → full jails in the motherland → transportation of criminals to colony → convict system – framed end of the 19 th or beginning of the 20th century

short story

- theme:

humanity, moral, punishment, penal system, Christianity

- plot :

executioner stitching cap

Glancy looking out of the window → at the preparations

conversation between Glancy and Chaplain Ford

Muster-Master Stonemans being agry about Glancy

jailbreak

comeback of Glancy

conversation Glancy Stoneman

Stoneman's decision of punishment

Glancy's torture

Glancy's execution

Muster-Master Stoneman realizing that he has not eaten Breakfast yet

- central motif:

convict system displayed as sadistic, inhumane and counterproductive

showing anti- authoritarian and anti- British feelings

exposition (pp. 10 – 13 → description setting and Glancy's story)

climax (p. 19 down)

solution ( Glancy's punishment and execution)

protagonists : Muster-Master Stoneman – Glancy

flat characters: Chaiplain Ford, Under Sheriff Ropewell, Officer Briggs, Executioner Johnson

narrating time : 20 minutes

narrated time: 1 day

setting:

place: Australia, Tasmania

An unpretentious building of rough-hewn stone standing in the middle of a small, stockaded enclosure. A doorway in the wall of the building facing the entrance-gate to the yard. To the left of the doorway, a glazed window of the ordinary size. To its right a paneless aperture, so low and narrow that there were four upright and two transverse bars, which grate it, doubled in thickness no interstice.

The building is the gaol- locally known as the “cage” - of Oatlands, a small township in the midlands of...