Boekverslag : Graham Greene - Loser Takes All
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Title: Loser Takes All Author: Graham Greene Place and year of publication: London, Heinemann, 1955. The story is told in the eyes of Mr. Bertram (also called Mr. Bertrand). He is an ageing assistant accountant and works on the ground floor. He is 40 years of age and he has no belief in luck. He didn’t like uniforms because they remind him of the fact that there are those who command and those who are commanded. He isn’t superstitious and he is planning to marry for the second time. He is the I in the story and his new wife is Cary. She calls his first wife Dirty who had been dark, plump and sexy with pekingese eyes. He planned to spend their honeymoon in St. Luke’s, Maida Hill, and then two weeks in Bournemouth. But Mr. Herbert Dreuther, a director of Bertram’s firm, switches the wedding and honeymoon to Monte Carlo as he says that Bertram mustn’t ‘give’ his beautiful young wife such a classical wedding. So he called for Miss Bullen and she successfully switched the wedding to Monte Carlo. Mr. Dreuther stays in Room 10 and he has been given a name by those who dislike him: the Gom (which stands for the Grand Old Man). He was like the weather: unpredictable and he also had a yacht, the Seagull, with a cargo of writers and actresses and oddments- a hypnotist, a man who had invented a new rose or discovered something about the endocrine glands. Sir Walter Blixon was another power at room No. 45. He was the chief accountant. He was small, spotty, undistinguished, and consumed with jealousy and he had a house in Hampshire and here he was a churchwarden. Some other people working in the same firm: Mr. Arnold Naismith, Miss Bullen, and Mr. Bowles (he is called A.N Other). Cary had lived with her Aunt Marion ever since her parents were killed in the blitz. When Bertram told her of the idea at getting married in Monte Carlo, she didn’t like it, but after some explaining and talking of Bertram, she accepted it. Cary was 20 and never married before. When you see Cary’s face, you would be reminded of innocence. She looks at the world with the eyes of a child and she never was bored. She enjoys life every moment and she likes seeing differences in everything. In Monte Carlo there was a casino and unfortunately Mr. Bertram start liking the casino too much while staying at Monte Carlo. Each time he went into the casino, he more and more liked it. In the beginning also Cary liked it, but one day they were walking and they saw an old couple on the street. The words that Cary and her husband heard were: “and so they lived unhappily after”. She said to her husband that this must be a warning to them as they were just married and also the omens said that their marriage would be unlucky. When Cary saw that her man couldn’t live without going to the casino three times a day, she hated it. Mr. Dreuther would attend their wedding but he couldn’t came as he was caught with engine trouble, but he didn’t forgot them as he had send 250,000 francs for them with the hands of the hotel manger. In the beginning Bartram only lost money but when he made some sort of a system, he started to win, and he himself could decide whether he would win or lose. He had his first great won of 5 million francs, after he spend the last of the 250,000 francs that Mr. Dreuther send for him. In the casino there was a middle-aged woman with a big bird’s nest of false blond hair and two gold teeth lingered around the most crowded table. Bertram and his wife met another man at the casino and he said that he had studied the winning numbers for years and he had a list of all the winning numbers. In the beginning he wanted to sell it for ten thousand francs, but in the end he only wanted 500 francs. But Bertram didn’t take it. Cary said that she had a better system, just like another woman there was doing: she waited when someone had won a enormous price of money and then go and beg for some money. But when she was scolded three times, she had enough and went to her husband, crying that she even was scolded for a prostitute. But she was given 100 francs by Philippe, a hungry young man, who never won at the casino. As Bertram was very busy making his money, he didn’t spend time with Cary, except from dining and sleeping. She got disappointed in her husband, so one day she said that she would have a dinner with Philippe (he calls her Cherie). As her husband didn’t liked that, he said that he also had a dinner with a woman. As he couldn’t find a woman, he had to dine with the Bird’s Nest as there was no other woman who would left the casino tables only to have dinner with a man. Lucky for him she was English, or else he had to talk his bad French. When both had their dinner, Cary said that Philippe asked her to marry him. She said that she was very unlucky to have lost Bertram because of his casino system. She said that the whole system had destroyed her, because she only lived for Bertram. After this quarrel, Mr. Dreuther came. When Bertram told him of his problem with his wife, Mr. Dreuther said that he himself had four wives. So he asked Bertram if he really wanted Cary back and he said yes. Mr. Dreuther said that the poverty appeals to Cary (he said this because Bertram himself was a poor man when Cary married him and Philippe also is a poor man). So he planned that Bertram must ask Cary for one last time to escort him for a trip with the Seagull. Cary agreed and she made Bertram promise that he would never gamble again and that he would throw away his damned system. He agreed, he also let Mr. Dreuther have the shares (aandelen) back that he had bought for only 15 million francs from Mr. Bowles as he needed money to play in the casino (Mr. Dreuther didn’t even know about this). Cary said that she even loves Bertram more than ever as he had left 15 million francs for Mr. Bowles and 5 million he gave to Philippe. So he was back at the stage he begun with. He had only 10,000 francs left. |
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