American Pastoral

Roth lets us know what his chapter will deal with from his very first sentence.
“The Swede. During the war years, when I was still a grade school boy, this was a magical name in our Newark neighborhood, even to adults just a generation removed from the city's old Prince Street ghetto and not yet so flawlessly Americanized as to be bowled over by the prowess of a high school athlete.”
It’s about the character of The Sweed, his significance as a figure in the context of the war, told through the perspective of a school boy in Newark, a common American town. Roth does not want his reader to be lost, instead, he wants to take us by the hand and tell us the story as clearly as he possible can. This long sentence where all the pieces of the puzzle are clauses linked together is his way of telling us that we should view his story as a whole, think of everything at the same time and not as a disjointed series of facts and motifs.
His task then is to weave the plot, the simple suburban characters with his heavier themes and the resonance they have in the context of the war. He uses the character of The Swede as his link, a character that is more walking theme and legend than a real person, an “anomalous face” that would be use to reflect what he wants to say.
The narration of his protagonist is one of that who now has distance from the fact. More than nostalgic, the sentences are trying to make sense of life back then; they attempt to explain something that others who lived it merely forgot.
“It was a cheer that consisted of eight syllables, three of them his name, and it went, Bah bah-bah! Bah bah bah . . . bah-bah! and the tempo, at football games particularly, accelerated with each repetition until, at the peak of frenzied adoration, an explosion of skirt-billowing cartwheels was ecstatically discharged and the orange gym bloomers of ten sturdy little cheerleaders flickered like fireworks before our marveling eyes . . . and not for love of you or me but of the wonderful Swede. "Swede Levov! It rhymes with . . . 'The Love'! . . . Swede Levov! It rhymes with . . . 'The Love'! . . . Swede Levov! It rhymes with . . . 'The Love'!"
Roth builds his sentences from being analytical to grounded in a powerful sensation he wants to share with us. He plays with the distance of the narrator, at times reminiscent, but moving closer and closer to the moment and eventually putting us right there in the sports march in this paragraph. He starts by coldly describing the rhythm of the piece. That sentence achieves two things- it gives the narrator distance from the scene. If he’s breaking down the cheer, then he’s not merely living it. But it also puts the rhythm in our head, so that when we get to the actual cheer, we’re right there in the moment. The narrator then suddenly becomes our narrator too, we were engulfed in the cheer- he backed out and allowed the moment to be.
His voice reappears in the second paragraph, starting with “Yes,”- this sentence structure choice, the yes and the comma, goes back the narrative voice and pulls us out of that scene he sat us in. W e go back to his statue of a character, who time and time again serves a s a bridge. The Swede is, after all, how we get to his brother, who by contrast is fiercely human.

The Uncanny

Far from clinical, Freud’s rhetoric engages the reader in a tone that does not report, but rather explains (sometimes casually) what he’s trying to say. This is a voice fascinated with its own subject, one that thinks on the page and holds the reader’s hand through what may otherwise be much to obscure.
There’s a clear distinction between an “I” and a “we”- I, Freud am telling you what’s known until this point, we shall explore together from this point on.

“I know of only one attempt in medico-psychological literature, a fertile but not exhaustive paper by Jentsch (1906). But I must confess that I have not made a very thorough examination of the literature, especially the foreign literature, relating to this present modest contribution of mine, for reasons which, as may easily be guessed, lie in the times in which we live; so that my paper is presented to the reader without any claim to priority.”

Freud as an “I” is established early on in the reading, but not until after a disembodied couple of brief paragraphs, were the subject of the essay is introduced from a much more foreign and impersonal point of view. It is only until Freud interrupts the general discussion of the uncanny with this bit of opinionated background information that we as readers identify a guiding voice.

By the second section, the investigation becomes “our own”.
The plural, however, does not mean a suppression of Freud as an authority in the essay. He suspends sentences with clauses like “and I hope most readers of the story will agree with me”, this is still his idea (“I will show you”, Freud says)

Freud then does not beg for the reader to believe him, it’s not a tone that begs with understanding or agreeing from the reader, it’s one that assumes it.

“It only remains for us to test our new hypothesis on one or two more examples of the uncanny.” Halfway through the second section, his idea is our idea.

Freud is like a school teacher, with the authority of his singularity, the “I”, comes the assumption that the reader is on the same page, that there’s no skeptical student that needs to be persuaded.

The professor approach comes in his literary analysis, where he first uses the story of the Sand Man to get us on board with him. Literature is used as the bride between famous psychoanalyst and the public.

The long plot summary just emphasizes the need for synchrony between writer and reader, though it never begs for it.

We, as readers and Freud and guide become a solid team by the third section, where we analyze the “creative writer” (a third, distant party) together.

Frederick Douglass' Chapter VII

Douglass earns an affective response from his readers, even if he doesn’t have to fight for it. Readers would readily feel sympathy for a person in his position, but only from a distant perspective. Here, we feel not for former slave, but for Frederick Douglas.
He does this by showing us who he is. The chapter does not start with great, devastating emotion. He instead starts off with his mistress, thus delaying what, (or who) the chapter is really about. He’s patient, and so are his sentences.
The suspension is first off grammatical- sentences are formed with long, slow clauses that transmit a calm, controlled voice. Douglas does not shift from this sentence structure, even when things get more emotional. We’ve seen stylists show emotion through changes in sentence length- long when they’re calm, short and snappy when conveying anger. That’s not the case here:
“I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed. While in this state of mind, I was eager to hear any one speak of slavery.”

Douglass shows passion without loosing himself. He’s the same one in moments of great desperation as he is when he’s introducing the subject- he’s though a great deal about his situation (profoundly since at leas the age of 12, as he tells us) so there’s no burst here. It’s not about self-discovery or a live breakthrough, it’s an explanation, which is why he makes use of metaphors:

“It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out.”

The self-reflection came long before these words made the page.
When I say that Douglass is in control, I mean he’s scholarly, not robotic.
His diction is almost religious, making his sentences resonate. He uses words like evil, behold, wretched and soul. Powerful emotion is evoked, but only after we meet Douglass as a person and not as an example. By the time the chapter elevates to its more passionate moments, we already know that this is a cerebral, controlled man that can reflect on the world and the people that surround him (his mistress), a man that can explain his own feelings about being a slave without being the overly emotional voice we’d expect.

Suppression of the individual is what slavery is all about, so even if a generic retelling of the horrors of the time period would suffice to achieve empathy from the reader, Douglas must achieve individuality on the page, which in the larger scale proves more powerful than his metaphors.

The Secret Sharer

Being a story driven by the voice of the protagonist, Conrad has the task of shaping the sentences in his prose in such a way that lets us know who this captain is.
His use of high style is revealing of the man’s character. He’s educated (he uses big words) but he’s also a romantic, one that dwells on abstractions as much as he does in action (in theme as much as in plot).
The story opens with a description of the setting that echoes throughout the story. The captain describes the sea as solid. Latter, he says:

“And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.”

The character is unsure of what to do or what to say in matters of human interaction, but finds comfort in the “straightforwardness” of the sea.
After being burdened with matters of the crew, he suddenly has this change in rhythm and tone, where the pace of the prose picks up with great emotion. First, he makes a distinction between what he finds safe and what he does not, the next clause is self-reassuring (I know I like the sea, I picked it as my career choice), then he glorifies it in a way that is not exclusively poetic, but rather helpful in deciphering who this man is. We are discovering it with him, for this sentence also serves as a moment of realization for the character, (an A-ha! Moment, if you will.)
But in matters of “the land”, this imperfection of narration- this learning as he speaks device is not romantic or poetic, it’s neurotic.

“My action might have made me appear eccentric. Goodness only knew how that absurdly whiskered mate would "account" for my conduct, and what the whole ship thought of that informality of their new captain. I was vexed with myself.”

These collection of short sentences that aren’t nearly as poetic as the majestic, certain one about the sureness of the sea. These are shaky in emotion and even a bit snappy (“that absurdly whiskered mate”, having “account” surrounded by quotations). The segments ends with a short, troubled little sentence- a far cry from the rhythmic, tranquil longer one he has when calm.

Unfiltered self-reflection carries the voice.

“I should have gathered from this that he was young; indeed, it is only the young who are ever confronted by such clear issues. But at the time it was pure intuition on my part. A mysterious communication was established already between us two — in the face of that silent, darkened tropical sea. I was young, too; young enough to make no comment.”

Conrad has the captain dubbing his new friend as “my double” in his mind. This man has come to act as a mirror for the narrator, something that he’s discovering as he tells us. The dash interrupts his thought, as if he’s taking time to ponder. This segments works that way. First he’s being clever and calling this man young for traits he observes in him, then he says how alike they were, and then the realization that he too was young.

Henry James, author, wrote paste, which is a story with long, suspensive, sentences that just when you think will climax, won't.

Henry James delivers sentences with great suspension, but what stands out is the fact that there’s no climax at the end of them. In short, he makes us wait, and wait, and wait and when we finally get there, there’s just another door.
“The pair of mourners, sufficiently stricken, were in the garden of the vicarage together, before luncheon, waiting to be summoned to that meal, and Arthur Prime had still in his face the intention, she was moved to call it rather than the expression, of feeling something or other.”
He describes the characters, sets the setting, gives us names, details and ends with “something or other.” The voice of the piece then is almost asthmatic. We wait, clause after clause to get “something or other.” But that doesn’t mean we get sick of it, or at least, that wasn’t my experience. Instead, you say “fine, Henry, I’ll open the next door” so on and so forth. Because there is no majestic explosion after the suspension, the entire piece becomes suppressive, one sentence slowly rolling into the next and into the next.
Here, the list of one sentences gives the sense continuing beyond its period and into the next:
“They met her eyes for the first time, but in a moment, before touching them, she knew them as things of the theatre, as very much too fine to have been with any verisimilitude things of the vicarage. They were too dreadfully good to be true, for her aunt had had no jewels to speak of, and these were coronets and girdles, diamonds, rubies and sapphires. Flagrant tinsel and glass, they looked strangely vulgar… “
It won’t stop. And from the rubies we go to the tinsel and how they looked vulgar and what that says about the character and on and on.
In sharp contrast to his prose, the dialogue of his characters is fragmented and with sharp edges:
"Cheap gilt, diamonds as big as potatoes. These are trappings of a ruder age than ours. Actors do themselves better now.”
They allow us to breathe before and move quickly before we get stuck back again into the intentionally swampy, slowing prose.

High, high style.

Pleasure is a quality of very little ambition: it thinks itself rich enough of itself without any addition of repute; and is best pleased where most retired. A young man should be whipped who pretends to a taste in wine and sauces; there was nothing which, at that age, I less valued or knew; now I begin to learn; I am very much ashamed on`t; but what should I do?

As high as high style can get. Montaigne’s writing comes from an experienced, wise point of view. Earlier in the essay, he mentioned that youth looks forward and old age looks backward, which is what fuels the tone of passionate melancholy that drives the essay. He indeed writes from a pedestal, taking liberties in language that essayists are not expected to take.
Deeply personal and achingly philosophical, Montaigne decorates, twists and personifies at will. In the passage above, Montaigne explains his first clause through these linguistic liberties. “Pleasure is a quality of very little ambition”- the clause is broad and vague, and Montaigne then proceeds to personify “pleasure”, which “thinks” in the second part of the sentence.
But Montaigne’s stylistic ornamentations aren’t there to show off. This method of getting his point across (pleasure is detached from intellectual ambition) is thoroughly explains by the essay’s style. The language play is there to help the writer deliver his message, it has a purpose.

Later in the essay jealousy has a sister and her name is envy, they’re both dumb so he won’t dwell on them. High style does not mean pompous- in that case, through the use of personification, Montaigne is funny and readable.

Going back to the excerpt on pleasure, Montaigne further grounds his point by setting an anonymous, generalized example, he speaks of a “young man”. He finishes up his point by bringing the idea closer to him and inserting his own experience in the essay- what could be more grounded than explaining a point through anecdote?
First he creates a broad amorphous statement up in the clouds, he captures it with graceful, poetic moves, he brings it down to human level and then close to his- a human, Montaigne himself, was at the center of his point. By the end of the idea, we’re really close:

I am more ashamed and vexed at the occasions that put me upon`t.

And speaking of personal:

do not consider how little it is that is given, but how few have it to give; the value of money alters according to the coinage and stamp of the place.

Montaigne does the opposite in this paragraph. He speaks of female “virtue” but does so at a distance, so far as using euphemisms. This is one of the longer paragraphs in the essay, where the writing really does circumvent the topic, being appropriately delicate and never quite approaching it directly. He knows how close is too close and therefore leaves the personal at a mere “we”, instead of telling us of that one time he wanted to take the local girl’s virtue.

Manifesto

The communist manifesto works in a very clear way- it’s concise, economical paragraph facilitate the understanding of the document, which is key to its success as a persuasive text.
Rooting their claims in history, the manifesto starts not by finger pointing and condemning, but by exploring the source of the problem, which sets the ground for them to present a solution. It’s insistence in drawing parallels through their examples is systematic and effective-

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

This paragraph begs the reader to ask “well, what about now?” and then the manifesto says “well, let me tell you”.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The constant use of suspension in the sentences force the reader to remain alert. The pattern of explaining through evidence make it an easy read. Difficult things are explained in the document, but this introduction serves as a well-written high school text book- it simplifies but does so with the intent of making the reader leave the text with a clear understanding of what’s happening. The manifesto earns our trust and our attention and thus effectively sets the stage for it to start manifest

You see,

Anderson’s writing is decidedly paratactic- first this happens and then that and then that. But the effective flow of it is a result that despite the fact that that the ideas seem isolated from one another, they do ease into the next. Anderson is the master of the story- he doesn’t tell us what happens, he explains what happens. There is no separation here between action and meaning, we get it all at once.
Anderson constantly resorts to “you see”, which in a way it’s him saying “you see, I’m telling you the story”. We don’t get to decide the mustache is ludicrous, he tells us and then explains why.
The entire piece reads like a montage, Anderson doesn’t spend much time in one scene, he instead lists events and what these mean.
His talky tone and use of low style (“Quite a fuss was made about the matter”) make the writing approachable, even if what he’s saying is quite esoteric:
“He was like a pregnant woman, only that the thing inside was not a baby but a youth.”
Anderson is the master and commander of the story, but he’s not pompous about he’s power. He’s flawed and thinks as he goes along. Here, he corrects himself in the midst of narration:
“No, it wasn’t a youth, it was a woman, young, and wearing a coat of mail like a knight.”
It’s like a witness talking to a sketch artist. He has authority and confidence in guiding us through the story, but he’s flawed. When he finally finds the word or idea he’s been looking for, he proceeds with emphatic confidence, like when he first introduces the idea of the grotesque, and goes on to expand on that

Hills Like White Elephats, highs and lows.

Because he is so invested in realism, the only thing that’s hidden in Hemingway, particularly in “Hills Like White Elephants” are details that the plot itself hides. We don’t know precisely what the couple is discussing because we’re eavesdropping out of context, and Hemingway is not about to be the master and commander of the world of story by telling us “behind her distant eyes and elusive words, the girl imagined the life she dawned inside, dying before the physician puts on his gloves”- she simply takes dinks the beer.
Hemingway, then, shows off how observant he is. In his prose, his words filter what we need from what we don’t, noting the character actions that make up for the intricate sentences that paint character psyches. This story is praised for what it doesn’t say.
Leaving it to the words of the characters, Hemingway took on the god-like task of creating a world so “real” that lends itself for assumptions we would take on conversation in real life. Except that Hemingway is a god that allows his characters to have free will, unlike other writers that trickle their worlds with foreshadowing and telling symbols.
It is widely said that this story is all about the subtext, that it’s merit lays in the trick of having a story without saying it. But the real achievement is in what the story does say, in creating that frame that lends itself to have such subtext. Liberated from the anxiety of deciphering intricate symbolism, or any stylistic devices someone in “high” style would use, we are free to observe knowing things happen because they happen, and that there is no majestic plan behind them.
“ ‘Dos cervezas,’ the man said into the curtain.”
He ordered to beers, nothing tricky about that. Two because one is for him, the other for the girl, not because the two beers represent the twins she’s carrying in her womb, and them gulping them representing the abortion.
We only have to interpret for the sake of understanding what words mean to the characters. It’s relevant that she lies about being fine because it tells us what she’s like, at least with him.

Here’s a conversion to high style:

Hemingway’s:
He picked up the two heavy bags and carried them around the station to the other tracks. He looked up the tracks but could not see the train. Coming back, he walked through the bar-room, where people waiting for the train were drinking. He drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people. They were all waiting reasonably for the train. He went out through the bead curtain. She was sitting at the table and smiled at him.

High:
The American picked up the suitcases, equal in style, the naked eye would presume they’re identical, matching, belonging to the same set. But he knew what was inside; he knew the stiff blazers in one and the fragile floral dresses in the other, he knew the garments in the suitcases were entirely different and not matching at all, for he had packed them himself while the girl pretended to be asleep.
Back at the bar-room, the others stood patiently for the train like schoolchildren at a bus stop, sipping their drinks with no more malice than children would sip from their juice boxes. His eyes waltzed through them as he drank an Anis, he stood in the same way he’d stand at the playground- alienated, frightened, different.
He walked through the bead curtain and found she was also alone. With her eyes just as scared, she shed of smile of both relieved recognition and frightened anxiety.


That came off as a satire of high style, but the distinction is evident.

Sister Mary

What is readily apparent about the play, is how much control Durang has over it. His protagonist is at the core of it, this is her world and these are her rules, but above Sister Mary, Durang is God.
Every line in the play is working towards something, be it bubbling to the end or tapping to a punch line. The presence of a playwright is apparent as the piece abandons every trace of realism and has its lines acting as gears with a clear purpose.
Sometimes, it feels too contrived. Durang, it seems, had a list of issues to address in their catholic context (homosexuality, abortion). Without easing us into this or any subject, Sister Mary jumps from a family anecdote to sharing her views on abortion. The transition is unnatural, but the play never claims to be anything but. If fact, the play takes the liberty of taking the protagonist’s scattered, forced way of thinking and applying it to it’s format.
Again, this is Sister Mary’s world, and she has decided this will function as a Q and A of sorts, a perfect excuse for Mr. Durang to touch on a myriad of subjects without easing in an out of them, or even weaving them in any way. The play allows itself to be as choppy as the character, and gets away with it for the most part.
In many ways it’s like being inside the nun’s head. We get the sense there is no filter between her thoughts and her words, she firmly believes everything she speaks which works in pro of the play’s decidedly disturbing tone. Repetition emphasizes the restrained insanity (restrained at least at the beginning).
Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Lord Jesus Christ.
There’s something frightfully robotic about Sister Mary. She is savvy with her delivery, conveying the scary notion that she is scholarly, in her own way. Her repetition sometimes works towards a punch:
“Dear God, please make my mother not be crazy.” God’s answer: No.
“Dear God, Please let me recover from cancer.” God’s answer: No.
“Dear God, please take away this toothache.” God’s answer: All right, but you’re going to be run over by a car.”
It is in these instances of controlled rhythm and masterful delivery that Durang succeeds in entertaining. There are a number of rhythmic paragraphs that tap their way to the punch line, drawing in the laughs. “It is a sin to follow horoscope… Christ was warm, loving, ad not attracted to anybody. Give me a cookie, Thomas.” Durang suspends the tension until the very end, we expect it and are anxious to see what it will be.
In fact, this is the stylistic roller-coaster-like skeleton of the play. We start out slowly, but steady go up and then descend into insanity, as Sister Mary’s dialogue gets more aggressive and the plot intensifies. Durang is at the end of the ride, going “ta-dah!”
These structured segments of dialogue mirror Sister Mary’s systematic way of thinking. Religion is no mystery to her, it’s an easy to grasp (even if tricky) bureaucracy. Prayer to St. Christopher was forwarded to St. Jude at a specific moment in history- it’s like they’re clerks at an office.
Sister Mary knows the exact population that turn s a city into Sodom and a precise range of years one could spend in purgatory. She knows God, almost intimately. She knows he’s not attracted to anyone, that sometimes he gets “grouchy” and that he’ll cut her some slack for killing Gary.
Her ideal students are robotic. Little Thomas is deprived of personality, he simply memorizes and repeats. Diane comes in as a point of comparison.
Her dialogue is heartfelt, human, doubtful. There is pain and skepticism in her sentences, she is perhaps the only “real” person in the play. We get the sense that Durang created her to showcase the results of painfully catholic upbringing- she’s part of his agenda.
Praising him, Frank Rich from the New York Times said that “only a writer of real talent can write an angry play that remains funny and controlled even in its most savage moments.”
But perhaps his anger eludes him sometimes, particularly where he pokes fun without there being a grander reason for it. In the pageant, Mary says she’s still a virgin and points at Joseph saying “he’s not the father.” His list of hell-bound celebrities also exists for the sake of comedy, however one of the main missions of this play is entertainment. But sometimes the jokes feel contrived, like a defense mechanism that mask resentment.
Sister Mary is the star of the show, she succeeds and earns our laughter, we don’t agree with her but we always laugh with her, never really at her. Her antagonists are for the most part bland, I don’t think anyone in the audience wanted this oddly-lovable nun dead. It’s here where Durang is successful- he creates a monster we can’t get enough of, he doesn’t render Catholicism as simply villainous and horrible, he seduces us with it. Ironically, everything in his play happens for a reason, which for the most part is very successful, even if sometimes he twists and bends the plot and words much in the way Sister Mary molds dogma in her favor.

Point of View: Fualkner style.

Faulkner does play with point of view, but he doesn’t treat his characters equally. The shift in point of view is not a mere switching of perspective; it’s not that (sometimes gimmicky) resource were the purpose of switching is solely to “see” through the eyes of different characters. The narration is omniscient, but more so in Minnie’s sections than in those of the men.
When we see the barber, Butch and the other picturesque southern characters, Faulkner’s voice merely sets up the action, they carry the story with their dialogue. We know Butch because we see his sweat stains and hear his idiotic contributions to the conversation. Their interactions are vivid, the narration is then reduced to its most elementary function- telling us what’s happening, who’s getting on the car, who’s standing up, how their faces look. Occasional insight is dropped in sections I and III (“they looked like men of different races”), but for the most part the story is action-driven here.
Minnie doesn’t get the same treatment. In fact, in the second section of the story, it feels like she gets the short end of the stick- Faulkner won’t let her talk, which wouldn’t be so shocking if it weren’t for the importance given to dialogue in the first section.
In fact, we don’t even see her in real time, we only get a back-story that feels no more revealing than what the barber had to say earlier. Minnie is not yet real to us in real time, it’s not her part of the story but rather one about her. It almost feels gossipy: “Sure; I buy it for the old gal. I reckon she’s entitled to a little fun.” The passage reads like a documentary done without Minnie’s consent, one that pokes fun ever so slyly. By doing this, we become visitors of the town, being his readers doesn’t grant us the privilege of seeing her vividly, not yet.
It’s not until Minnie’s second part of the story that character analysis becomes part of the narration. Here, a shift occurs- suddenly, we’re not just hearing about Minnie but instead have earned that access as readers we yearned for earlier. Even if much of her remains in the dark, we at least spy on her as suppose to ask about her. Suddenly, we know her in a much more intimate way than the vivid characters in the other sections (e saw them as if bystanders in the town), a sensation we carry to the last part of the story, when we are shocked as readers at our intrusion in McLendon’s house. We never thought we could “see” him that way.

Stranger in the Village

Baldwin knows he can’t convey his message through generalizations, not right from the start. He’s also aware that getting too personal would only result in a bitter rant exclusively about his feeling- one that would fail to get any message across aside from “I’m angry.”
So, instead, he opts for combining them by means of a personal anecdote that makes him reflect on the larger picture. He approaches his personal experience with a scholarly point of view, or at least frames his anxieties with it. The essay’s start is almost anthropological. It is Baldwin that studies these villagers- they are curious to him, almost primitive. One can easily picture a sophisticated urbanite amongst the rural folk. “In the village there is no movie house, no bank, no library, no theater…”
These villagers don’t know much about anything. He makes it appoint to assert this difference when mentioning his typewriter is the only one there; some villagers had never even seen one before. This removed, studious eyes he sees these people with, along with the annoyances that pepper his descriptions (“closed in the winter and used for God knows what”) is then undermined by his experience n the town. He becomes the curiosity, suddenly he is bellow them.
When this happens, Baldwin’s tone changes from observant to self-aware, and yes, bitter. His own experience, the way he became a curiosity, an inferior curiosity, serves to illustrate the point he’s making beyond his own anecdote- for some reason, he white man automatically, unquestionably superior in all scenarios. The village, then, is truly a microcosm for the way things work in the world.
“I know that no individual can be taken to task for what history is doing, or has done.”
Baldwin remains presents this story, as a tangible example of his thesis and remains true scholar despite it’s a source of anger in him.
He admits to the outrage, but is decidedly reasonable through the entirety of the essay. He is patient in his actions and patience in his words. He stops to realize he can’t outright hate these people, which gives him license to explore their, and consequently the world’s ugliness.

"You know what I'm saying, right?"

It takes a while for Goodbye to All of That to warm up into a relatable, compelling piece (despite the fact it tries from the very beginning.) Relating seems to be a main anxiety in the piece, were the author uses a warm, conversational tone that almost seems to ask “you get what I’m saying, right?”
“…I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you…”
Didion has the I reaching for the You every step of the way, in a tone that is both confessional and conversational where her insights are also supposed to be our own, or at the very least understood by the reader. The reader weighs a whole lot in these paragraphs, It is the essays mission to get to its audience, reaching sympathy or a connection of some sort.
This persuasive quality drives most of the piece. Didion presents an idea about her, explains herself and concludes in a point that is hopefully universal. It’s formula, clean cut and efficient, is very much like those of essays in standardized reading comprehension tests, which is why it takes a while to warm up to its particularity.

“Someone that lives with a plane schedule in the drawer lives on a slightly different calendar. Christmas, for example, was a difficult season.”
Didion wants to explain a topic she deems complicated as opposed to complicate the mundane.

In the spirit of being universal, she aptly moves from “I” to an “us”. She started alone in New York and in the essay, but through a recognizable “transition sentences” she moves from describing her experiences to being part of a tribe- From I was alone to we were outcasts; perhaps with the intent of having us join at the end of our reading.

There is a distinct moment in the essay when the approach changes. Before the first break, the diction had been passive approachable. She spoke about her life but only by means of illustrating a point. After the break, it truly gets personal. It’s almost as if she’s done speaking, walks away and then comes back to really tell us about herself.

“That is what it was all about, wasn’t it? Promises?” For the first time, she’s not entirely sure. Her use of rhetorical questions here is different than earlier, where she wrote:
“was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you someone was.” She was explaining something here, were as latter she’s thinking out loud.
Imagery is suddenly use. Now, she’s not going point-proof (or point, acknowledgement of counter point, proof) but rather allowing for a story to flow, particularly in the paragraph about viewing the sunrise.

Pretty dresses and a hint of blood.

Plath’s chief concern seems to be conveying this character at the core of her writing. From the moment she decides to write in the first person, she puts us in the head of this girl, and we as readers get to see the world through her eyes. It is through her descriptions of the world, through the things she takes note on and those she disregards that we understand who she is. Unlike Nabokov’s first person narrative, this character does not engulf herself with her thoughts, she does not dwell page after page on what she thinks abut what she’s thinking, in fact, it tends to be the oppose.
This character seems to avoid painful self-awareness and instead lays her eyes on images.
The description of such images, and their subjects add to the childlike quality of the character. Her skirt is like a lampshade, her sleeves like floppy angel wings. All girly, decidedly innocent metaphors to describe her clothes. She’s astute in her descriptions. Plath wants to convey a certain naiveté without ever mistaking it for silliness, for even if she describes cars as being “glove gray” she can still think of herself “negotiating” her way through an aisle.
We see her avoiding painful thoughts when she hastily mentions people looking at her, before she goes on to wonder why on earth people care about the blood in her face. Plath eases the disturbing into the innocence with an ease that hints the character wishes to undermined it, as if saying “I have blood in my face, what’s the big deal?”
The way she drops the uneasy in between the playful description lets us know of the character bias. There are things she wont dwell on, thus we won’t see them. Instead, look at the trees outside the window.
Her innocence is emphasized over and over again, without getting tiresome, for it’s a well-crafted tone that guides us through the writing.
“The motherly breaths of the suburbs enfolded me.” This character is young in more ways than one.
“It smelt of lawn sprinklers and station wagons and tennis rackets and dogs and babies.” The eagerness of the sentence via the repetition of “and”, plus the elements of the list (particularly the placement of dogs and babies in the end) serve to emphasize who this character is.
Also, it continues to hammer the way she thinks, which she would describe as “hotchpotch”, “baring no relation to another.” Plath describes one thing while actually referring to another in that first paragraph. The jumpy, scattering she mentions in that first paragraph sets the tone for the character’s stream of consciousness, when she jumps from not wanting her mother to see her pain to how clean and slippery the upholstery is.

Lawrence's anxious rocking-sentences.

Lawrence imposes a commanding, all-knowing voice from the start. What feels very much like a deep, serious (albeit sometimes witty) tone guides us from the offset through a weaving of plot and theme from start to finish. Lawrence does not dwell on showing when he can say “she could not love them” without the reader questioning him.
This piece of information on the mother not loving her children is part of the suffocating mood of doom he gets us in, one where dark abstractions take over the plot sometimes. His voice is cold and distant, observant not so much of how things look, but how they feel. For this reason, metaphors are some of the only images we get. These metaphors are of course decidedly pessimistic, like that hard little place in the mother’s heart.
We know these characters economical abstractions, that description of the mother’s heart, or the boy’s hot blue eyes, for example, reveal much more than when he talks about how many children they were, they quiet servants and their house. But these distant descriptions are there for a reason, they are imperative in painting a backdrop.
Much of Lawrence’s writing is extremely vague, first in his descriptions, then on his plot and eventually even in his dialogue, all playing off the notion of what is not said but merely felt. First, he tells us the father went to “some office”, then, the vagueness creeps into the plot as “these prospects never materialized”. He then goes on to telling us that there was always the “sense of a shortage of money.”
This “sense” embodies Lawrence’s abstractions- his theme moves with repetition into the plot, clouding the division between plot and idea. The theme almost literally creeps into the scene, “it came whispering from the springs”, like a venomous cloud that personifies the toys in the room, making dolls self conscious and wooden horses attentive, it moves through the repetition of “there must be more money!”, creating a tangible anxiety through rhythm, to a point where you can almost see the theme.
Soon, the story gets even more abstract as the anxiety moves from a shortage of money to a shortage of luck, presenting itself in the dialogue of all places.
Paul (almost possessed by the nebulous, haunting theme) asks “Then what is luck, mother?” prompting the mother to answer that a lack of luck means a lack of money, thus establishing that abstraction really does rule their world. Here, repetition of “bitter” pounds the mood, sinking us further into the story’s anxious, cloudy tone.
Paul goes off “vaguely”, “seeking inwardly for luck. He wanted luck, he wanted it, he wanted it.”- abstraction, repetition, repetition, anxiety... the tittle, after all, refers to a creepy rocking horse: a tangible object turn into mood.

Orwell showing us how it's done, but not really.

Throughout his rhetoric, Orwell keeps forcing (though ever so gently) the reader to compare his writing to that he claims deficient.

He stars off broader than that, comparing his hypothesis about the decline of the English language to that he deems incorrect.
“Our civilization is decadent and our language- so the argument runs- must inevitably share in the general collapse.

He sets himself apart from this idea by interrupting it to state this isn’t his own. The use of pattern 18, with that undermining, whispering interruption “-or so the argument runs-” sets up such argument to be incorrect, without flat out saying so. Here, Orwell may have just as well ended the sentence with “or so they claim.”

Orwell abstains from outright insulting those claims he deems inaccurate to preserve that helpful, quasi-objective tone. He knows that any other way, he’d be coming off as pompous, especially with the snobbish subject matter of the decline of the English language, most especially because he’s George Orwell.

Always precise in his sentences, Orwell sheds light on the wishy-washiness of other’s arguments. In illustrating how ridiculous their claims of his approach being old fashioned, he resorts to precise metaphor, saying they argue that his reasoning is like “preferring candles to electric light.” His comparison is clear, and it almost feels like he wants us to know that he’s helping them illustrate their claims, that’s just how “general” they are.

Linking inefficiency to lack of precision is something he does from the very start. After wording the opposing view with terms such as “general decline” he describes their view as “half-conscious.” Then, he carries on the comparison (his precision versus their ambiguity) in an even more obvious matter:

“Now, it is clear that the decline of language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not simply bad influences of this or that individual writer. The sentence is split right in the middle, him on one side with “must” and “clear”, the opposition in the other with “this or that.”

He then moves on to slamming writing for its ambiguity, just as he did with something more abstract (a point of view) before. Yet, just as before, he never makes his feelings too obvious. He never says “this is how it’s done”, he instead slyly shows us buy continuing the comparisons.

When Orwell shares a point of view, he’s efficient: with sentences like “The point is that the process is irreversible.”, yet remaining accessible by using the first person and “hoping” his examples are clear.

Systematic Orwell lists five examples of poor writing, yet tries to rule out snobbery, telling us he hasn’t picked such examples because their particularly bad. He knows that without that little side note, we’d think of an elitist indulging in mocking poor writing.
In keeping with his helpful demeanor, Orwell picks examples from a variety of sources- professors, letters, pamphlets. That way, he remains objective.

Orwell lists five examples, then two qualities- not “a few” or “a couple”- he’s always precise. Further contrasting, he calls out bad writing for having a “lack of precision”.

In showing us how it’s done, without blatantly giving us a condescending example, he says phrases in poor writing are “like sections of a prefabricated hen-house.” immediately after, he pins down a deficiency of modern writing: the dying metaphor.

Steering away from the “pretentious language” he then condemns, he keeps that helpful, accessible tone throughout his analysis. But he takes liberties with it on occasion by using sermon-like diction, while remaining at our level- “our thoughts are foolish”, “mental vices we now suffer”.

Sentences by Joyce

Here are some identifiable sentence types in Joyce’s “Grace”:

“By grace of these two articles of clothing, he said, a man could always pass muster.”
This is an inversion of a normal pattern, and therefore sentence type 15. Joyce could have said “He said that by grace of these two articles of clothing a man could always pass muster.” But instead Joyce reverts it instead.

“Mr. Power, a much younger man, was employed in the Royal Irish Constabulary Office in Dublin Castle.”
Grammatically, the sentence could work without the additional information that “a much younger man” provides. This fragment, framed by commas serves as the sentence modifier.

“Two nights after, his friends came to see him.”
Here, a prepositional phrase precedes the subject and the verb. His friends came to see him, but before that we learn that they did so two nights after. This is pattern #14.

Repeatedly, Joyce has short sentences for the purpose of a transition:
“There were worse husbands. “
This is an example of pattern 19. In the context, the sentence provides a transition between two ideas in a paragraph. In this case, it moves us from a description of the character to his relation with his wife.

Again and again, Joyce has long, explanatory sentences bound to each other by dry, shorter ones. For example:
“The part of mother presented to her no insuperable difficulties and for twenty-five years she had kept the house shrewdly for her husband. Her two eldest sons were launched.”
Notice the contrast between the first sentence and the one that follows it. First, Joyce gives us a long sentence that is sophisticated in content and longer than the one that precedes it. The second, shorter sentence, grounds us by stating a quick fact that also serves as a transition for a second idea, in this case, details about the sons:

“One was in a draper’s shop in Glasgow and the other was a clerk to a tea-merchant in Belfast.”
Joyce resort to this pattern to give us profound insight about his characters, but then reinforce it with realism- precise, perhaps mundane details that take us from idea to day to day fact.
“They were good sons, wrote regularly and sometimes sent money. The other children were still in school.”
Stating the sons were good is then made concrete by details, then me move to precise, irrevocable facts. The other children were still in school.
In the example above, we see a pattern Joyce is fond of, a simple one- A, B and C.
“He took a mouthful, drew it up, saturated his palate with t and then spat it forth into the grate”
This pattern allows the narrator to strip himself of the power of omniscience and become merely a reporter, a witness. Humanizing the narrator may be the reason why after every philosophical insight to the characters, he grounds the rhetoric with facts.
The powers of the narrator are not taken away, but filtered. During the first paragraph, the voice merely reports, knows just as much as we do, it takes a while before we get inside the characters. Joyce wants us to see them outside before we know their minds. He first drops a quick line about the silk hat, points it out to us but doesn’t tell us why its important to the charter until latter.
In fact, a clear break between observing fact and explaining ideas via a gap in the prose (page 259), when we move from Mr. Power to Mrs. Kernan. The latter has more information about Mr. Kernan, who the story seems to be about. Therefore, we move from seeing this unknown man in the ground to the insides of his home life. First a question- Who is he? And then the answer.

The textbook’s fourth pattern is easily identifiable in Lolita, if anything because Nabokov is so fond of it.

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”- A, B, C.

The ease of this sentences, the way B follows A and C follows B with enamored pace sets the tone for this particular excerpt.

“My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

The rhythm is established long before it’s made obvious through “Lo. Lee. Ta.” We hear the voice of an infatuated man letting his inner mood taking control over his sentences, a man that moves from sighing sentences to short, more precise ones.
Nabokov tells us about the taping, and then shows us. He’s convincing the reader about the spell the girl has on him without seeming over-eager or persuasive, simply enthralled. We thus get the feeling he’s speaking to himself, his eyes gone as mouth slowly taps his ideas.

“She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.”

Sentences in pattern 4 are scared here and there but these shorter ones are majority in the passage. The use of repetition “She was” continues the rhythm. A paced, controlled tapping that reflects a state of mind, the brevity of the sentences never accelerate the pace, nor do they allow it to hyperventilate.

That’s not the case with the following:

“I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards. He owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera. His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels and silk, respectively.”

The rythim here is more eager, less ephemeral, more present. It also reflects that in these sentences, he’s stating fact, not feeling- “But in my arms she was always Lolita” versus “He owned a luxurious hotel in the Rivera.”
Though not terribly diverse, this second passage is reacher in diversity of sentence style, for it reflects a different state of mind. The character is the same, he’ll never be flowery or showy, but his mood certainly changes- the first excerpt is hypnotic, the second factual.

Clinton's Inagural Speech.

Presidential rhetoric appears to be more effective when encapsulated in tight, neat, digestible pattern. Americans have grown to expect their leaders to inspire, uplift and reflect within the bounds of efficient familiarity. Clinton’s inaugural speech hits all the marks in the checklist, evoking cheers and tears through pattern within pattern, a speech with a Russian nesting doll system of sorts, where a period rests inside another.
Certainly recurring (and bound to) a periodic style, Clinton uses parallelism to provide the clues he’ll latter use to conclude in a climax, within another climax, within another. There is of course no room for running style, no one wants their president thinking aloud.
Let’s analyze the speech from the inside out. Parallelism is used in all layers-
“From our revolution, the Civil War, to the Great Depression to the civil rights movement, our people have always mustered the determination to construct from these crises the pillars of our history.”
The historical events he lists in parataxis provide suspension in a small scale. They are paralleled clues that lead to the period’s climax- the American tradition to “construct from these crises”. First he lists the ingredients, then he tells us why.
The paragraph before it uses the same formula:
“Though our challenges are fearsome, so are our strengths. And Americans have ever been a restless, questing, hopeful people. We must bring to our task today the vision and will of those who came before us.”
American attributes are listed in the same way the historical events are listed. First the clues that create the suspension and then the tiny climax.
Both examples rest in the same layer, and are thus parallel to each other. These two periods suspend a larger tension, working towards a larger climax.
On a broader level, we have broader pattern that houses periods of its own. The paragraphs starting with “To renew America… ” are connected to each other by their pattern- they start with paralleled opening phrases, an explanation an a conclusion. These then work as speeches within the speech with parallelism of their own inside of them.
The section starting with “To renew America, we must revitalize our economy” reaches its individual climax through a smaller pattern inside of it- Let us put aside, Let us resolve, Let us give this capital back. This entire portion about the economy suspends the entire speech in the same level that “To renew America, we must meet challenges abroad as well at home” and “ To renew America, we must be bold.”
The entire speech reaches its climaxed when it ties everything with its opening metaphor. Clinton compared the power of historical event with forcing the spring. The levels within the levels were thus working towards a climax for the metaphor, and achieves it with
“Yes, you, my fellow Americans have forced the spring. Now, we must do the work the season demands.” He told you it was coming, he explained what it demands, the speech is now tightly wrapped. Cue the applause.

A Silver Dish

Bellow intertwines the meaningful and the mundane as a device to reveal more about the main character. Much in the way stream of consciousness behaves; there is little or no distinction between the light and the heavy- there is no transition between the two, giving the piece an erratic and improvised tone that conveys both appropriate honesty and unpretentiousness.
“On the White Nile, Woody had the impression that he had gone back to the pre-Adamite past, and he brought reflections on this impression home to South Chicago. He brought also a bundle of hashish from Kampala. In this he took a chance with the customs inspectors, banking perhaps on his broad build, frank face, high color. He didn’t look like a wrongdoer, a bad guy; he looked like a good guy.”
The sophisticated notion of “bringing” a life lesson learned on a trip is immediately grounded by the physical and more common action of transporting hashish. “Veni, Vidi, Vici” is cited by Lanham as a basic example of parataxis. The same analysis is applicable to this paragraph, for the connecting sentence between both ideas (the reflection and the hashish) is not connecting at all, if anything it provides the same service as the comma between “Veni” and “Vidi”.
By radically different experiences at an equal level, Bellow also demands the reader to pay equal attention from both of them, for we aught to learn of this character in particular through both the complex and the common. This, after all, is what the character set to be from the very start- Woody is both a tile contractor and an intellectual. The constructions of the sentences that describe him reflect that. Woody is a big concept, but one meticulously conveyed through small actions of wording
Had there been a paragraph break, or had both characterizing examples been divorced through hypotaxis (in terms of relevance), the observant life realization would have been overly romanticized and the hashish dismissed as merely comical. It is thought the use of parataxis that they balance each other out so one is not overly analyzed and the other overlooked.
Comedy results out of Bellow's defiance to take his description too seriously (as cliché as that idea is). There isn’t even a paragraph break between the dwelling on the life-changing African experience and the mundane airport stress, thus ferociously establishing the child-like tone appropriate to the story.
“I mean! As Woody put it, be realistic.”
Casual, familiar and almost annoyed, the use of italics jumps as a statement about the story. It stands out and yells at the reader that Woody is a person just like us, that familiarity is to be expected.
“Woody, a businessman in South Chicago, was not an ignorant person. He knew more such phrases than you would expect a tile contractor (offices, lobbies, lavatories) to know.”
Through the humorous insertion of the list in parataxis, a list that provides with superficially unnecessary information, Bellows keeps emphasizing the tone and characterization. The specifics, the tangible offices, lobbies, lavatories (further emphasized by pathos) grounds grander ideas in the same way the hashish did for the African experience. The specifics further ground the already dry notions that being a contractor evoke.

Analysis of Verb-Style Writing.

The following is an article that discusses the finding of “a clue to life” in a comet. Kenneth Chang, the author of the article, cautiously uses verb style to facilitate information that would otherwise be indigestible to an uninformed reader.

“For the first time, a building block of proteins — and hence of life as we know it — has been found in a comet.

That adds to the prevailing notion that many of the ingredients for the origin of life showered down on the early Earth when asteroids (interplanetary rocks orbiting the inner solar system) and comets (dirty ice balls that generally congregate in the outer solar system beyond Neptune) made impact with the planet.”

Chang’s hyphenated first sentence indicates eagerness on his part in sharing the information. The way the sentence is structured makes it clear that this is big news.

“and hence life as we know it” interrupts what would otherwise be a bland sentence to underline what is so important about it. The wording of the fragment is familiar and borders on science fiction cliché, but it nevertheless succeeds in pointing out what may get lost in duller writing. The reader, who is likely no expert in real science, recognizes the urgency in the words. Part of why “life as we know it” is so engaging, and its wording so popular, is that fact it’s written in verb style. Something in noun form, like “compatible with the current definition of life”, lacks the necessary punch. Verb form provides that inclusive “we”.

The following paragraph also uses verb form- proteins are found, ingredients shower and dirty ice balls congregate. These are not captivating nouns all by themselves, but in this context, and via the use of verb style, Chang conveys relevance to them without romanticizing the facts or flirting with a distracted personal fascination for the subject. Verb style in this case manages to highlight without poeticizing, to efficiently inform without overstating.

Verb style, despite its subtlety through most of the article, serves to make the information more reader-friendly. A scientist is quoted in the article-

“That means production of amino acids is fairly common,”

This noun-style phrase from someone in the field has the stoic tone attributed to the sciences, proving Chang’s verb style is a facilitator of information.

Chang, Kenneth. “From a Distant Comet, a Clue to Life.” The New York Times 18 Aug. 2009. NYTIMES.com. August 31, 2009 /

Analysis of Noun-Style Writing

Noun style writing tends to disassociate an action from its authors- it turns action into noun and strips it of accountability. In explaining the difference between noun and verb styles, Lanhaman points out that bureaucrats prefer the former.

The effect of anonymity, however, is opposite to the intentions of Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply, who wrote an article about Disney’s latest move in the New York Times.

Typical of business sections, companies are attributed personalities through the use of verb form. Disney acts a certain way, it has a certain behavior and it is normally portrayed in these circles as powerful, ambitious and aggressive. This article is no exception, it’s title reads “Disney Swoops into Action, Buying Marvel for $4 Billion.”

The writing plays with the notion of a company having a psyche and at the same time hints on words that evoke super-heroes, like “swoop” and “action”.

The article then makes use of noun style writing. In these instances, the writing doesn’t shy away from its initial “all cards on the table” approach, but rather moves further in the rout of personifying.

“The acquisition points to the film industry’s biggest issue at the moment: access to capital. Those who have it are finding opportunity; those who do not may be left behind.”

Disney and Marvel seize to become the protagonists of the article as the business venture itself becomes a noun (albeit one without an official name) and not merely an action of the companies. Disney doesn’t point out through acquiring, the acquisition itself does.

“The deal is not without risk. Questions include whether Marvel’s lesser-known characters can be effectively groomed into stars and to what degree the most valuable and heavily exploited assets (Spider-Man, the X-Men) have weakened in box-office power.”

The hand shakers become less relevant as “the deal” itself steals the spotlight. The article started out by talking about the companies, then delved into discussing their actions and ended up analyzing “the deal” as something that “is” as opposed to something that happened. The use of noun style in this case, as in other writing that discuss a pact or agreement allow for the action to become a noun, reflecting the fact that it will have a lasting and significant effect.

Barnes, Brooks and Cieply, Michael. “Disney Swoops into Action, buying Marvel for $4 Million.” The New York Times 18 Aug. 2009. NYTIMES.com. August 31, 2009 /