Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
This short story is called "The Secret" written by Arthur C. Clarke. It was first published in "This Week" magazine on August 11, 1963. That was not its real name, instead, "The Secret of the Men on the Moon". Later it was published in the collection of short stories "The Wind from the Sun" (1972) with the actual name.
Image of how the magazine looked
The story begins with the arrival of a journalist on the Moon, Henry Cooper. While in the previous times he has visited our characters he has been all well received with the scientific staff to explain their discoveries and works, but, this time is totally different.
He notices that he is treated with coldness and distance, so his instinct as a journalist tell him tht something being hidden from him that he must discover.
Despite the approach, the story is short and the mystery (secret) is quickly unraveled. However, the protagonist expected to find something related with extraterrestrial life but it wasnt what he expected.
A story plot diagram is a line graphic of the story`s events. The story`s events are: Exposition, Conflict, Rising action, Climax, Falling action and Resolution.
The exposition of "The Secret" is:
"Henry Cooper had been on the Moon for almost two weeks before he discovered that something was wrong. At first it weall only a ill-suspicion, the sort of hunch that a hard-headed science reporter would not take too seriously. (...)"
The exposition is the introduction a story, including the primary characters, setting, etc. In this story is almost all of the first sheet.
The conflict of the "The Secret" is when Henry Cooper realized that the scientists are hiding something from him because they acted coldly and with distance. (Its in the first page).
The rising action in the story is when Henry Cooper goes to talk to his cop friend Chandra about what worries him, about what the scientists are hiding. Chandra tells him that he will investigate. A few days pass and he decides to take Henry Cooper to a scientist named Dr. Hastings who will explain everything.
The climax is when Dr. Hastings decides to tell Henry Cooper all about the big secret they were keeping from him and also to explain his scientific project. And he is surprised that the secret is completely different from what he thought (it appears at the beginning of the fourth page). It is mentioned that hamsters were used in the expirement.
In the falling action it happens after the critical point, the climax. In this story is when after Dr. Hastings tells him the secret, he decides to tell him why he kept the secret.
"Think of them up there," he said pointing to the roof, to the invisible Earth, whose looming presence no one on the Moon could forget. "Six billion of them, packing all the continents to the edges - and now crowing over the into sea beds. And here" he pointed to the ground "only a hundred thousand of us, on an almost6 empty world. But a world where we need miracles of technology and engineering merely to exist, where a man with an IQ of only a hundred and fifty cant even get a job."
At resolution is when the doctor decides to ask Henry Cooper what he will do with this big secret. While our protagonist is in doubt about what he will do with that great secret, that it is prolonged life. This on the end of the story.
"And now we find that we can live for two hundred years. Image how they´re going to react to that news! This is your problem now, Mister Journalist; you`ve asked for it, and you have got it. Tell me this please - Id really be interested to know - just how are you going to break it to them?"
He waited, and waited. Cooper opened his mouth, then closed it again, unable to think anything to say. (...).
The vocabulary (new words) of the story "The Secret" are:
1) What would be the effect of sharing the secret with the Earth?
2) What did Cooper do when he found out that something was wrong with the people on the Moon?
3) What was the secret that the doctor found on the Moon? With which animal did he discover it?
4) Why do you think Arthur C. Clarke wrote this story? Was it to warn the future that planet Earth would become crowded?
5) What if the secret had been about the aliens and interplanetary plague Henry Cooper suspected in the beggining of the story? What would have happened in the story?
The author of this short story was Arhur C. Clarke. He was born in a English farming family in the seaside town of Minehead, in the southwestern of England on December 16th, 1917. He got honors in Physics and Maths. He passed away at the age of 90, in 2008. He made a lot of non-fiction and science fictions books.
More information about the author is in this presentation: https://view.genial.ly/646294a38f697a001391c4b0/presentation-arthur-c-clarke
A literary is a writing technique that writers use to express ideas, meaning and importants themes in a writing. In this story there so many literary devices like metaphores, similes, allusion and foreshadow.
Metaphores
Metaphor means a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which is not literally applicable. In this story appears two:
Similes
Simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike thing using "as" or "like". In this story we have many similes:
Allusion is when he hint at something and expect the other person to understand what we are referencing. (with a literary text, to a person, place, etc.)
In this story we found one allusion:
Foreshadow is a narrative device in which suggestions or warnings about events to come are dropped or planted. In this story we found one:
We can see how he is about to reveal the secret.
The Secret is a science fiction story because we can realise that there is human life living in a very huge base in the Moon.
The people in the Moon live longer than in the Earth because of the gravity. This will be sound crazy but, in the earth our body has to hold the gravity (fighting) and in the Moon, nothing of this exist.
The elements of Science Fiction in this story are:
The theme of this story called "The Secret has a complicated theme for sucha short piece of writing. The theme is universal justice, and the collaboration of two polar opposite minds in completing the difficult task of revealing a secret to the world. Its a theme that touches on the fact that humans will do whatever it takes to survive, and as a result they will become paranoid about the fact they can live more longer in other place, such as the moon.
Another theme is aprecciating nature. Its does show in the story how the moon is aprecciated, but it is also wasted.
As I before, Nature is aprecciated and at the same time not. The story shows that the Earth is becoming more and more crowded. For this reason, the secret was kept that it was possible to live more on the Moon.
So the message of the story is: we have to value what we have, because the Earth is not forever, one day the resources will run out.
Another messsage is the the importance to keep secret about important things (in this case is a scientific discovery) for the safety of others.
Mercedes Muñoz Toriggia
Lucas Larpin
Victoria Ferraro