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.