A Silver Dish

"There were Woody’s two sisters as well, unmarried, in their fifties, very Christian, very straight, still living with Mama in an entirely Christian bungalow. Woody, who took full responsibility for them all, occasionally had to put one of the girls (they had become sick girls) in a mental institution. Nothing severe. The sisters were wonderful women, both of them gorgeous once, but neither of the poor things was playing with a full deck."

Saul Bellow has a syntactic habit with his sentences: they are symmetrical. Take a look at the very first sentence of this paragraph from A Silver Dish. Bellow begins the sentence with a longer phrase "There were Woody's two sisters as well" and then staccatos the middle of the sentence with smaller phrases and descriptions of the two sisters: "unmarried, in their fifties, very Christian, very straight." He then closes the sentence symmetrically with a longer phrase "still living with mama in an entirely Christian bungalow." This creates an instant rhythm to the sentence. The symmetry and rhythm, however, go further into the structure of the sentence. The staccato feel of the inner phrases comes from both the syllabic counts in the phrases (unmarried - 3, in their fifties - 4, very Christian - 4, very straight - 3), as well as the word and image repetition ("very Christian, very straight....Christian bungalow").

This symmetry and rhythm continues throughout this bit of paragraph above, again in the phrase and clause lengths within the sentences. Bellows strategically places sips of details in the gulp of the sentence. Woody's action in the second sentence is immediately interrupted by one of these side-notes ("Woody,who took full responsibility...,occassionally") and then is interrupted again with another side-note ("they had become sick girls"). The fragment "nothing severe" acting as a sentence is, in fact, another side note. The reader is side-tracked yet again in the fourth sentence as cuts off his thought for a moment about what wonderful women Woody's sisters are with "both of them gorgeous once" and then continues with what he was saying. Bellows does this quite frequently throughout the piece, creating a readable, information-packed, symmetrical rhythm for the reader to settle into.

Adding to this rhythm is Bellows polysyndetic style. His conjunctions are not always present in the text, nor are they overly pronounced like Hemingway, but they are thinly hidden between the phrases and clauses. Moreover, Bellow's sentences are full of action. His characters are always doing something. Take a look at the original text:

Woody would allow no undertaker’s assistant to dress him but came to the parlor and buttoned the stiff into the shirt himself, and the old man went down looking like Ben-Gurion in a simple wooden coffin, sure to rot fast. That was how Woody wanted it all. At the graveside, he had taken off and folded his jacket, rolled up his sleeves on thick freckled biceps, waved back the little tractor standing by, and shovelled the dirt himself. His big face, broad at the bottom, narrowed upward like a Dutch house. And, his small good lower teeth taking hold of the upper lip in his exertion, he performed the final duty of a son. He was very fit, so it must have been emotion, not the shovelling, that made him redden so. After the funeral, he went home with Halina and her son, a decent Polack like his mother, and talented, too—Mitosh played the organ, at hockey and basketball games in the Stadium, which took a smart man because it was a rabble-rousing kind of occupation—and they had some drinks and comforted the old girl. Halina was true blue, always one hundred per cent for Morris.

Now look at it broken down:

"Woody

would allow no undertaker’s assistant to dress him

but came to the parlor

and buttoned the stiff into the shirt himself,

and the old man went down looking like Ben-Gurion...

At the graveside, he

had taken off

and folded his jacket,

rolled up his sleeves on thick freckled biceps,

waved back the little tractor standing by,

and shoveled the dirt himself...

...And, his small good lower teeth

taking hold of the upper lip...

he

performed the final duty of a son...

After the funeral, he

went home with Halina...

[and]Mitosh

played the organ...

and they

had some drinks

and comforted the old girl."

This pattern of action is common in Bellow's style and creates a current in his story that keeps the reader engaged and going down river. Thus while Bellow's style is not entirely parataxis (there is no clear cut repetition like in Heminway or "I came, I saw, I conquered.") and incorporates some hypotaxis, the story escalates to such an intensity that parataxis is obviously present. "And there was his elderly, large, muscular son, still holding and pressing him when there was nothing anymore to press. You could never pin down that self-willed man. When he was ready to make his move, he made it—always on his own terms. And always, always, something up his sleeve. That was how he was. " The hidden paratactic rhythm, symmetry, and repetition heightens the potency of the story and ends it all with an immense crash.