DE CARVALHO Lucie

English test 1

The two pictures are related to Elderly people. We can see that the first picture is happier than the second. This impression is first due to the light : one half of the second picture is completely black contrary to the first one which is very bright, even a sunbeam is to be seen on the left.

In the first picture, the focus is two old people, a man and a woman, who are standing in the bottom right-hand corner. They are perhaps husband and wife, or good friends. They are looking at us. But in the second picture, our eye is immediately caught by the darkness in which we can make out an old bent woman walking alone. She is turning her back on us, we can’t see her face as if she had no identity. She is only an old woman among the community of Elderly people.

The couple in the first picture is standing on the left, they are looking at their future. They are straight : they are self-confident perhaps because they are two, they don’t have to fear anything because they don’t have to cope with loneliness. Moreover, on the left side of the background, a man and a child are to be seen, they are surrounded by many birds, we can’t see their faces but we can suppose that it is what happened during their lives; they may have had children…This picture is totally the opposite of the second one in which there is no sky above her. The future of the woman is completely closed by a wall. She seems to have accepted her fate; she is walking slowly in the dark alley, thinking about the past. She is totally neglected, obviously no ones takes care of her. Alone, like an old spinster with no family, she will reach the obituaries where her name will be written. She is walking to her death.