The Old Oak Bowl

Hi everyone

As you may already know, the next story you have to read is 'The Old Oak Bowl'

Jose María from group L has written the following review, so I hope it will help you with your reading...

The story I’ve written about is “The old oak bowl”. It’s about an English man called Robert Walker who is a history schoolteacher. He is old, and his life is a bit boring. Robert thinks that people have to behave properly all the time. This is the reason why he doesn’t say his opinions about some topics. For example, he firmly believes that English people are only the people who have English ancestors.

In the story, we can see how he thinks and how he acts in different situations. His favourite hobby is to restore old wooden pieces. In fact, although he restores a lot of other people’s objects, he doesn’t accept any money and only says “it’s just my little hobby”. In one of these cases, a woman gave him an old oak bowl from about the thirteenth century, and Robert fell in love with it.

That night he had a dream. There was a monk with the bowl. It contained some herbs and the monk was speaking a strange language. When he told his dream to another history teacher, the teacher told him that the language the monk was speaking was probably French, because in 1066 there was a Norman invasion and a lot of foreigners arrived to England. Moreover, he told Robert that “Robert” is a Flemish name. Robert couldn’t accept it, because it contradicted his strong beliefs. But the following week, he took some books from the library and investigated about it. It was true! He couldn’t believe it! After this discovery, he continued reading a lot and he finally had to accept it. Most of the English people were, in fact, “foreigners”. This changed the way he saw things, and he asked himself if it was time to retire and spend his time restoring old wooden objects.

In my opinion, it is a good story because it shows the main character’s personality very well and his beliefs about an actual and controversial topic: immigration. It shows us different points of view about it and I think this is a very good thing. The language is not very difficult and it can be easily understood. In conclusion, I recommend you to read this story.