the Goat of Mr Seguin is one of the new exits of the Lettres of my Mill of Alphonse Daudet. According to Claude Gagnière, it is clearly allotted to its negro, Paul Arène. In the form of letter with a friend, Pierre Gringoire, it is a Apologue inspired (according to the last lines of the text) by a popular history of Provence.

Summary

Pierre Gringoire, friend of Daudet, do not want to be made chronicler in a newspaper, but to remain free. The narrator makes him remonstrances and tells then him the history of the Chèvre of Mr Seguin. This one had had already six goats, all eaten by the wolf to have wanted to taste with the freedom of the mountain. Blanquette, splendid small goat, is well treated by its Master, but starts as those which preceded it, to be bored. She entrusts to Mr Seguin her wish to leave in the mountain, and essuie a frightened refusal of her Master. To prevent any escapade, it locks up it in a cattle shed, but forgets the window, that the goat uses at once to leave the places. She discovers the majestic mountain then, and spends a delicious day. The evening fall; Blanquette hears the horn of Mr Seguin, and the wolf also… It then decides to remain in the mountain, and the fight with its predator starts. The combat lasts all during the night; finally, the day rises, and Blanquette, éreintée, is let devour.

Analyzes

Kind

More still marked than in the Legend of the man to the gold brain, the kind seems frankly epistolary. The letter starts thus with has Mr. Pierre Gringoire, lyric poet in Paris ; the narrator addresses to his friend many times during the history, in particular after the escape of the goat, or at the end, to support the fact that morals is intended to him.

However, the Apologue is more present. The narrator launches, before beginning the account itself, “You will see what one gains to want to be free. ”, which clearly indicates the will to teach something with its reader. A little naive fictional aspect, in particular of the gift of word to the goat, makes think of the Fountain, famous for its apologues in form of Fable S. Enfin, some symbols come to give a color of convention and complicity between author and reader; for example, Blanquette is the seventh goat of Mr Seguin.

Morals

Morals is implicit. It is known as in all letters which “the wolf threw on the small goat and ate it”; however, the narrator clearly does not say which could be, according to him, the fate of Gringoire if it persists in being poet.

It is obvious that the narrator reserves for Gringoire, for his dreams of poet, a future opposite with that described if it accepts the condition of chronicler: he will have neither “beautiful ecus with the pink”, nor “cover at Brébant” (a table reserved and paid in a great restaurant of the time with Paris)… The wolf will be perhaps the pitiless company, or more simply the hunger, evoked in the beginning of the text (“this thin face which shouts the hunger”); whatever the interpretation, the narrator sees for Gringoire sinks it future of the paupers and its associated conditions.

Style

The style is rich, because very changing throughout the news. The narrator describes thus very lyriquement and in a language picturesque and scented “the love of small goat” which is Blanquette, or the sumptuous mountain which honors its small visitor. But the dominant one is actually the subjacent tragedy. As of the beginning, “You will see what one gains to want to be free. ” is followed immediately of “Mr. Seguin had never had happiness with its goats. ”. Several elements come to break pleasant situations, predicting a disastrous end: Blanquette, in its Master, looks at the mountain suddenly; after the escape, the narrator known as “We will see whether you will laugh presently…”; happy in the mountain, the goat sees the evening falling, and “Suddenly the wind fraîchit. ” One thus sees an accumulation, which tends to prepare the reader with dead goat. Lastly, the succession of “Then the wolf was thrown on the small goat and ate it. ” and “Good-bye, Gringoire! ”, sounds like a funeral oration. The narrator is based then on the culture of the Provence to say that this history is veracious, and insists on the tragic destiny of the small goat, by repeating the sentence of the setting with death, this time in Provençal: “E piei lou morning lou eaten wolf. ”

References

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