Alphonse Daudet and the year’s conclusion

From the textbook analysis: the story is told by a young child; through Frans’s eyes the writer judges a national-cultural event that seems small. Monsieur Amel’s caring combined with sadness, his resolve and his love of mother tongue and homeland are felt. To understand the story one must know that the Alsace and Lorraine region of France was occupied by the Germans; the “drilling of the Germans” and the teacher’s address point to this. Every object in the classroom and the teacher’s clothes are described exactly; the adults sitting at the back stress the people’s heavy grief – as if burying their mother tongue. The remark “we French always put off learning” applies to the youth of every age. Time is like a drop of water, it cannot be brought back. The teacher’s thought “a colonised people can come into the light only through its mother tongue” relates, in the textbook’s view, also to the recent past of the Uzbek language. Daudet wrote a moving story about the fate of the national language, which holds an incomparable place for every nation.