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Abi-Aufgaben
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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Task 2

Working on the text

Do the following tasks, writing coherent texts. Use your own words as far as appropriate.
(28 BE)
1.
Summarize the information on Dr Laing.
2.
Analyze the way the author creates atmosphere in this excerpt.

Writing

Choose one of the following tasks:
(32 BE)
3.1
Using the extracts a starting point, assess the implications of living amongst a “homogeneous collection of [...] people”.
or
3.2
You are working on an international youth project on urban life. Write a blog entry for the project website, commenting on the statement below.
englisch abi thüringen 22 part b task 2
Thompson Adams, Trisha (2012). Dec. 22. In 366 Sketchbook.
Extract from the novel "High-Rise"
The action is set in London in the 1970s.
1
While preparing breakfast soon after eleven o'clock one Saturday morning three months earlier,
2
Dr Laing was startled by an explosion on the balcony outside his living-room. A bottle of
3
sparkling wine had fallen from a floor fifty feet above, ricocheted off an awning as it hurtled
4
downwards, and burst across the tiled balcony floor.
5
The living-room carpet was speckled with foam and broken glass. Laing stood in his bare feet
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among the sharp fragments, watching the agitated wine seethe across the cracked tiles. High
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above him, on the 31st floor, a party was in progress. He could hear the sounds of deliberately
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over-animated chatter [ ... ]. Needless to say no one at the party was in the least concerned about
9
the ultimate destination of this missile - but as Laing had already discovered, people in high-
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rises tended not to care about tenants more than two floors below them.
11
Trying to identify the apartment, Laing stepped across the spreading pool of cold froth. Sitting
12
there, he might easily have found himself with the longest hangover in the world. He leaned out
13
over the rail and peered up at the face of the building, carefully counting the balconies. As
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usual, though, the dimensions of the forty-storey block made his head reel. Lowering his eyes
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to the tiled floor, he steadied himself against the door pillar. The immense volume of open space
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that separated the building from the neighbouring high-rise a quarter of a mile away unsettled
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his sense of balance. At times he felt that he was living in the gondola of a ferris wheel
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permanently suspended three hundred feet above the ground.
19
None the less, Laing was still exhilarated by the high-rise, one of five identical units in the
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development project and the first to be completed and occupied. Together they were set in a
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mile-square area of abandoned dockland and warehousing along the north bank of the river.
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The five high-rises stood on the eastern perimeter of the project, looking out across an
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ornamental lake - at present an empty concrete basin surrounded by parking-lots and
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construction equipment. On the opposite shore stood the recently completed concert-hall, with
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Laing's medical school and the new television studios on either side. The massive scale of the
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glass and concrete architecture, and its striking situation on a bend of the river, sharply
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separated the development project from the rundown areas around it, decaying nineteenth century
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terraced houses and empty factories already zoned for reclamation. [ ... ]
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For all its size, the high-rise contained an impressive range of services. The entire 10th floor
30
was given over to a wide concourse, as large as an aircraft carrier's flight-deck, which contained
31
a supermarket, bank and hairdressing salon, a swimming-pool and gymnasium, a well-stocked
32
liquor store and a junior school for the few young children in the block. High above Laing, on
33
the 35th floor, was a second, smaller swimming-pool, a sauna and a restaurant. Delighted by
34
this glut of conveniences, Laing made less and less effort to leave the building. [ ... ]
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The apartment had been expensive, its studio living-room and single bedroom, kitchen and
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bathroom dovetailed into each other to minimize space and eliminate internal corridors. To his
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sister Alice Frobisher, who lived with her publisher husband in a larger apartment three floors
38
below, Laing had remarked, 'The architect must have spent his formative years in a space
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capsule – I'm surprised the walls don't curve ... '
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At first Laing found something alienating about the concrete landscape of the project - an
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architecture designed for war, on the unconscious level if no other. After all the tensions of his
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divorce, the last thing he wanted to look out on each morning was a row of concrete bunkers.
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However, Alice soon convinced him of the intangible appeal of life in a luxury high-rise. Seven
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years older than Laing, she made a shrewd assessment of her brother's needs in the months after
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his divorce. She stressed the efficiency of the building's services, the total privacy. 'You could
46
be alone here, in an empty building - think of that, Robert.' She added, illogically, 'Besides,
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it's full of the kind of people you ought to meet.'
48
Here she was making a point that had not escaped Laing during his inspection visits. The two
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thousand tenants formed a virtually homogeneous collection of well-to-do professional people
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– lawyers, doctors, tax consultants, senior academics and advertising executives, along with a
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smaller group of airline pilots, film-industry technicians and trios of air-hostesses sharing
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apartments. By the usual financial and educational yardsticks they were probably closer to each
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other than the members of any conceivable social mix, with the same tastes and attitudes, fads
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and styles - clearly reflected in the choice of automobiles in the parking-lots that surrounded
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the high-rise, in the elegant but somehow standardized way in which they furnished their
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apartments, in the selection of sophisticated foods in the supermarket delicatessen, in the tones
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of their self-confident voices. In short, they constituted the perfect background into which Laing
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could merge invisibly. His sister's excited vision of Laing alone in an empty building was closer
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to the truth than she realized. The high-rise was a huge machine designed to serve, not the
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collective body of tenants, but the individual resident in isolation. Its staff of air-conditioning
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conduits, elevators, garbage-disposal chutes and electrical switching systems provided a neverfailing
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supply of care and attention that a century earlier would have needed an army of tireless
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servants. Besides all this, once Laing had been appointed senior lecturer in physiology at the
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new medical school, the purchase of an apartment nearby made sense. lt helped him as well to
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postpone once again any decision to give up teaching and take up general practice. But as he
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told himself, he was still waiting for his real patients to appear – perhaps he would find them
67
here in the high-rise? Rationalizing his doubts over the cost of the apartment, Laing signed a
68
ninety-nine-year lease and moved into his one-thousandth share of the cliff face.
Ballard, J. G: High-Rise. London: Fourth Estate, 1975, pp. 2 – 7

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