Word: malavoglia
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...said in the street. "And the boat was loaded!"-with a cargo worth more than 500 lire, a vast sum to simple fishermen. The owner of the cargo could sooner have gathered figs from thistles than money from these destitutes; but in loyalty to their code of honor the Malavoglia would not shirk the debt. "We are ruined," said Grandfather 'Ntoni quietly-and began with all his humble means to resist the fact...
...serving in the navy. "Every wind," people said, "is contrary to a broken ship." Final payment of the debt had to be postponed again & again. "Long things turn into snakes,", the neighbors were saying. In the end they were right; the owner of the lost cargo foreclosed, and the Malavoglia lost their heart's ease at day's end-the house by the medlar tree...
...Price of Anchovies. A well-to-do villager had already broken off his son's engagement with Mena, the eldest Malavoglia girl; the shipwright now ordered his daughter to stop seeing young 'Ntoni, Mena's brother. Grandfather 'Ntoni only drove the fishing harder. The neighbors said he was "hunting for trouble with a candlestick." One night he found it. The boom fell in a bad storm and struck his head. 'Ntoni and Alessi, his little brother, barely got the boat ashore; Grandfather 'Ntoni was laid up for months...
...sooner was he well than cholera struck. It killed so many people in Sicily that the price of anchovies dropped disastrously. Grandfather Malavoglia had to sell the boat...
...brother's crime, the younger sister ran away and became a prostitute; the elder stayed home to be an old maid. The old man died in the poorhouse. Alessi and the girl he loved, Nunziata, were left to rebuild the family's fortunes. "The house of the Malavoglia is destroyed'' a neighbor said in epitaph. "Cursed be the fate that led to so many misfortunes...