[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-143883-en":3,"doc-seo-143883-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":11,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},143883,1099514067438,"River Wang","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/100002539ee87300030?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1780474512215547542",2,"Literature","The Recognitions - PART I - I - THE FIRST TURN OF THE SCREW","William Gaddis’s The Recognitions, Part I, opens with a layered narration that frames Camilla’s fate through religious ritual, social reserve, and familial conflict. The account tracks the couple’s voyage to Spain and the cascade of events after Camilla is stricken with acute appendicitis. As an inquiry unfolds, appearances unravel: the ship’s surgeon is not what the role implies, and deliberate deception—false papers and forged identities—reshapes responsibility, chance, and moral judgment.","William Gaddis  \nThe Recognitions  \nPART I  \nI  \nTHE FIRST TURN OF THE SCREW  \nMEPHISTOPHELES (leiser): Was gibt es denn?  \nWAGNER (leiser): Es wird ein Mensch gemacht.  \n—Goethe, Faust II  \nEven Camilla had enjoyed masquerades, of the safe sort where the mask may be dropped at that critical moment it presumes itself as reality. But the procession up the foreign hill, bounded by cypress trees, impelled by the monotone chanting of the priest and retarded by hesitations at the fourteen stations of the Cross (not to speak of the funeral carriage in which she was riding, a white horse-drawn vehicle which resembled a baroque confectionery stand), might-have ruffled the shy countenance of her soul, if it had been discernible.  \nThe Spanish affair was the way Reverend Gwyon referred to it afterwards: not casually, but with an air of reserved preoccupation. He had had a fondness for traveling, earlier in his life; and it was this impulse to extend his boundaries which had finally given chance the field necessary to its operation (in this case, a boat bound out for Spain), and cost the life of the woman he had married six years before.  \n—Buried over there with a lot of dead Catholics, was Aunt May's imprecation. Aunt May was his father's sister, a barren steadfast woman, Calvinistically faithful to the man who had been Reverend Gwyon before him. She saw her duty in any opportunity at true Christian umbrage. For the two families had more to resent than the widower's seemingly whimsical acceptance of his wife's death. They refused to forgive his not bringing Camilla's body home, for deposit in the clean Protestant soil of New England. It was their Cross, and they bore it away toward a bleak exclusive Calvary with admirable Puritan indignance.  \nThis is what had happened.  \nIn the early fall, the couple had sailed for Spain.  \n—Heaven only knows what they want to do over there, among all those. . . those foreigners, was one comment.  \n—A whole country full of them, too.  \n—And Catholic, growled Aunt May, refusing even to repeat the name of the ship they sailed on, as though she could sense the immediate disaster it portended, and the strife that would litter the seas with broken victories everywhere, which it anticipated by twenty years.  \nNevertheless, they boarded the Purdue Victory and sailed out of Boston harbor, provided for against all inclemencies but these they were leaving behind, and those disasters of such scope and fortuitous originality which Christian courts of law and insurance companies, humbly arguing ad hominem, define as acts of God. On All Saints' Day, seven days out and  \nhalf the journey accomplished, God boarded the Purdue Victory and acted: Camilla was stricken with acute appendicitis.  \nThe ship's surgeon was a spotty unshaven little man whose clothes, arrayed with smudges, drippings, and cigarette burns, were held about him by an extensive network of knotted string. The buttons down the front of those duck trousers had originally been made, with all of false economy's ingenious drear deception, of coated cardboard. After many launderings they persisted as a row of gray stumps posted along the gaping portals of his fly. Though a bouton-nière sometimes appeared through some vacancy in his shirt-front, its petals, too, proved to be of paper, and he looked like the kind of man who scrapes foam from the top of a glass of beer with the spine of a dirty pocket comb, and cleans his nails at table with the tines of his salad fork, which things, indeed, he did. He diagnosed Camilla's difficulty as indigestion, and locked himself in his cabin. That was the morning.  \nIn the afternoon the Captain came to fetch him, and was greeted by ascream so drawn with terror that even his doughty blood stopped. Leaving the surgeon in what was apparently an epileptic seizure, the Captain decided to attend the chore of Camilla himself; but as he strode toward the smoking saloon with the ship's operating kit under his arm, he glanced in ag","cbCaijSQMzhrDtTz","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaijSQMzhrDtTz","pdf",2820067,1,968,"English","en",105,"# PART I\n## I\n## THE FIRST TURN OF THE SCREW","[{\"question\":\"What sets the events of this section in motion?\",\"answer\":\"A couple sails for Spain in early fall, and on All Saints’ Day Camilla is suddenly stricken with acute appendicitis.\"},{\"question\":\"How is the ship’s surgeon portrayed, and what is later revealed?\",\"answer\":\"He appears as a surgeon with disheveled, improvised habits, but the subsequent inquiry shows he is not a real surgeon at all.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the phrase “the first turn of the screw” refer to here?\",\"answer\":\"It signals the early stage of a tightening sequence of cause and consequence, where deception and “acts of God” converge to worsen outcomes.\"}]","The Recognitions - PART I - I - THE FIRST TURN OF THE SCREW | PDF",1787697119,1491,{"code":4,"msg":31,"data":32},"ok",{"site_id":24,"language":23,"slug":33,"title":13,"keywords":34,"description":14,"schema_data":35,"social_meta":86,"head_meta":88,"extra_data":90,"updated_unix":28},"the-recognitions-part-i-i-the-first-turn-of-the-screw","",{"@graph":36,"@context":85},[37,53,68],{"@type":38,"itemListElement":39},"BreadcrumbList",[40,44,47,50],{"item":41,"name":42,"@type":43,"position":20},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":45,"name":46,"@type":43,"position":11},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",{"item":48,"name":12,"@type":43,"position":49},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":51,"name":13,"@type":43,"position":52},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-recognitions-part-i-i-the-first-turn-of-the-screw/143883/",4,{"url":51,"name":13,"@type":54,"author":55,"headline":13,"publisher":57,"fileFormat":60,"inLanguage":23,"description":14,"dateModified":61,"datePublished":62,"encodingFormat":60,"isAccessibleForFree":63,"interactionStatistic":64},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":56},"Person",{"url":41,"name":58,"@type":59},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-06","2026-08-25",true,{"@type":65,"interactionType":66,"userInteractionCount":11},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":67},"ViewAction",{"@type":69,"mainEntity":70},"FAQPage",[71,77,81],{"name":72,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":74},"What sets the events of this section in motion?","Question",{"text":75,"@type":76},"A couple sails for Spain in early fall, and on All Saints’ Day Camilla is suddenly stricken with acute appendicitis.","Answer",{"name":78,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":79},"How is the ship’s surgeon portrayed, and what is later revealed?",{"text":80,"@type":76},"He appears as a surgeon with disheveled, improvised habits, but the subsequent inquiry shows he is not a real surgeon at all.",{"name":82,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":83},"What does the phrase “the first turn of the screw” refer to here?",{"text":84,"@type":76},"It signals the early stage of a tightening sequence of cause and consequence, where deception and “acts of God” converge to worsen outcomes.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":51,"og:type":87,"og:title":13,"og:site_name":58,"og:description":14},"article",{"robots":89,"canonical":51},"index,follow",{"doc_id":7,"site_id":24},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":92},[93,97,100,104,109,114,119,124,129,132,136],{"id":20,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":94,"show_sort_weight":95,"slug":96},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":11,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":12,"show_sort_weight":98,"slug":99},80,"literature",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":101,"show_sort_weight":102,"slug":103},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":105,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":106,"show_sort_weight":107,"slug":108},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":110,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":111,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":120,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":121,"show_sort_weight":122,"slug":123},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":125,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":126,"show_sort_weight":127,"slug":128},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":130,"show_sort_weight":127,"slug":131},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":133,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":134,"show_sort_weight":133,"slug":135},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":137,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":138,"show_sort_weight":105,"slug":139},19,"General","general"]