Reefy

Sherwood Anderson is passive, a little vague, and decidedly weird. Weird for 1919, anyway. And eccentric for Winesburg, Ohio, I might add.
His style is, like I said, very passive, but only so because Anderson tells the story in past tense. Also I think the passivity adds to the stories' tone of an old man creaking in and out of bed to write down his half dreams. The tone is slow, but like the youth inside the old man, the story itself is undisciplined and modern. I would also like to point out that Anderson switches from strict third person to a bit of first person smack dab in the middle of this story. Suddenly the old man writer is not just a story, Anderson knows him. And, I get the strange feeling, Anderson possibly is him (though looking at his age at the time this was published--43--he isn't terribly old). Then! In the second to last paragraph, he throws in some second person! Just for fun, obviously.
This story as a whole would make a great 2-D early Disney cartoon short, I think. The colors of the Grotesques in the old man's dream would be spectacular all drawn or painted out.

Both Anderson stories, however, seem to have morals at their ends. These are the bare bones of the morals I picked up on, anyway: in "Book of the Grotesque" it is ' Truth is beautiful, but it makes people grotesque.' And in "Paper Pills" (whose title I don't particularly fancy) it is 'sweet beauty can come from unexpected, imperfection.'

Simple Hem

"Hills Like White Elephants" is simply typical Hemingway. The rhythm, the diction, the tone, the drinking in the hot, hot sun--it's all so perfectly Hem. Even Hemingway himself knows this. The girl says "'I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it – look at things and try new drinks?'" Yes, that is all one does in a Hem story.

That being said, this story, like any other Hem story is low and informal. His sentences are abrupt and detached, and his dialogue is simple. Not every writer can pull off this style in short stories, though, I think. Hemingway somehow manages to sew his own voice into this simplistic style and can get away with it.

The majority of this story is told in dialogue. The few lines that are descriptive of the surroundings are very straight forward: "The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads." Hemingway doesn't bother with flowery, decorative language to describe; instead, he relies on the reader's imagination and the actual objects and surroundings he describes to speak for themselves. "The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table." This one simple sentence creates an entire setting. Each word serves a purpose and adds to the sentence--Hem does not throw around his words lightly.

Perhaps this is why Hemingway is so successful as a writer with such a terse style--he uses his few words well. They are specifically functional and always add something to the story. Other writers may write simplistically, but perhaps they are not as efficient with their words. Lets look a slightly longer description:

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies.

The first sentence "The hills...were long and white," is a pretty basic sentence (there is a subject "hills," prepostional phrase 1 "across the valley" followed by prepositional phrase 2 "of the Ebro," verb "were," and adverbial subject complements "long and white") and in its simplicity, it singlehandedly creates the story's setting. In the next couple of sentences, Hemingway builds on this first sentence and cuts a small, square picture to set his characters in. "There was no shade and no trees"--it was warm and bright, and he adds in the one side note about the "curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door" because he will utilize it later on (when Jig wants to try to the drink it advertises.) Even though this curtain will later serve a purpose, he gives an immediate purpose: "to keep out flies."


Here's another Hemingway snippet:
"He did not say anything but looked at the bags against the wall of the station. There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights."

And this is this same snippet written in a higher, wordier style:

"The American said nothing in response to her, but looked down toward the suitcases he had laid against the stone wall of the station. Labels from all the hotels they had previously stayed at in the last year were glued onto the sides, irrevocable stamps marking their past."

bleeeegggghhhh

"Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You" was entertaining--slightly horrifying, but entertaining just the same.

I think Sister Mary Ignatius is a rather predictable character. I couldn't help thinking of her as Professor Umbridge from Harry Potter. She acts moral and pious and kind, but beneath her habit, she is simply cruel. This is obvious from her first lines, " First there is the earth. Near the earth is the sun, and also nearby is the moon. (Sister smiles at the audience, and checks to make sure they have followed what she has said.)" The true heartless flesh of her character comes out little by little and, I think, is completely out in the open during her "Bleeeghhh" speech.

Durang's style is very controlled; from his stage directions to the dialogue between characters, everything is overtly intentional. I can imagine Durang combed through every word of this play until it was exact. "This is Thomas, he is seven years old and in the second grade of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow School," (382) Sister says, introducing the little boy (for whom we later see she has implied pedophiliac sentiments). "Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow School" is obviously not just a jab at the ridiculous names of Catholic schools; no, here Durang began to introduce the dominant tone of the play: Sister Mary and the Catholic Church are a miserable crew and make everyone else miserable.

Just as Sister's true colors are slowly revealed, so is Durang's message. Little intentional jokes are strewn throughout the dialogue and Sister's monologues. Ie: "then just dare to feel sorry for the children lining up outside of school" and "My father was big and ugly, my mother had a nasty disposition and didn't like me; and there were twenty-six of us. It took three hours just to wash the dishes, but Christ hung on that cross for three hours and He never complained." (384)--hilarious. Durang distributes similar comments rather sparsely in the beginning of the play. They are folded into Sister's more factual side of her lecture: "Venial sin is the less serious kind, like if you tell a small lie to your parents, or when you take the Lord's name in vain when you break your thumb with a hammer, or when you kick a barking dog." (385) (What a subtly great punch line. Notice how Durang shortly suspends this sentence).

But as the plot climaxes, every sentence becomes sardonic and direct:

Sister: "Jesus is going to throw up....Bleeeeeeeeeeeeggghhhh. You make me want to 'bleeeeegghhhh.' (To all four sutdents, angry.) Didn't any of you listen to me when I was teaching you? What were you all doing???...There is the universe, created by God. Eve ate the apple, man got original sin..."(402)

In the final lines, Durang holds nothing back and just lets the audience have it:

(Sister shoots Gary dead. Then throws her arms in the air for joy.)

Sister: (Triumphant.) "I have sent him to heaven!...I'm not really within the letter of the law shooting Gary like this. But really if he did make a good confession, I have sent him straight to heaven and eternal, blissful happiness. And I"m afraid otherwise he would have ended up in hell. I think Christ will allow me this little dispensation from the letter of the law, but I'll go to confession later today, just to be sure."

I think the entirety of the play actually rather mirrors an argument: it starts out in normal, soft voices, arguing a point and ends screaming and inches from your face. Perhaps it can be said that this play is, in fact, the illustration Durang's argument with the Church.

history is a nightmare from which i am trying to awake.

Faulkner's story is frightening and awful.

He spins the story between two ledges, Ms. Minnie and the barber. That is, between these two characters, the two halves of the story come together. Minnie's side probably could've been done without--the barber's experience is awful enough on its own and readers can easily draw up Minnie's character without being told. But Minnie's insanity reinforces the barber's insistence that Will Mayes didn't do it and thus Faulkener uses her well.

As a matter of fact, Faulkener does a lot of things well in this story. The dialogue propels the story and adds to the tension already in the story's tone. The characters argue and cut each other off, creating a great sense of conflict and upset.

What I'd mainly like to look at, however, is Faulkner's good sentences. He uses a lot of extended phrases to drag out his sentences. The whole of the story, however, is punctuated with much shorter sentences; this adds to the kick of the story and also moves it forward.

Look at the very first paragraph--The first sentence is a mixture of brilliant metaphor, simile, and syntactic suspense: " Through the bloody September twilight, aftermath of sixty-two rainless days, it had gone like a fire in dry grass---the rumor, the story, whatever it was." The phrase "aftermath of sixty-two rainless days" is specific and acts as the suspensive element of the sentence.

The next sentence is really a fragment and its quickness punctuates the first and third sentences. It is conversational--just a half thought the narrator mutters to himself. "Something about Miss Minnie Cooper and a Negro."

The third sentence, however, is the grand finale of the paragraph: "Attacked, insulted, frightened: none of them, gathered in the barber shop on that Saturday evening where the ceiling fan stirred, without freshening it, the vitiated air, sending back upon them, in recurrent surges of stale pomade and lotion, their own stale breath and odors, knew exactly what had happened." How brilliantly long and suspensive.

What gives this sentence its suspense, however, is the great three line noun phrase at its center: "gathered in the barber shop on that Saturday evening where the ceiling fan stirred, without freshening it, the vitiated air, sending back upon them, in recurrent surges of stale pomade and lotion, their own stale breath and odors." Without this suspense, the sentence would simply read "Attacked, insulted, frightened: none of them knew exactly what had happened." But Faulkner, of course, won't give up his plot line so easily. This sentence is rather parallel to a rumor in the flesh--it rolls on for longer than it should and finally ends with no one really knowing "exactly what happened."

Another great paragraph is the description of McLendon a little further down into the story. "The screen door crashed open. A man stood in the floor, his feet apart and his heavy-set body poised easily. His white shirt was open at the throat; he wore a felt hat. His hot, bold glance swept the group. His name was McLendon. He had commanded troops at the front in France and had been decorated for valor." The sentences here are short and choppy, the rhythm resembles the pulsing vein I imagine was visibly throbbing on McLendon's red temple at that moment. Each quick sentence is out of breath, much like the tone of the story at this point. The youth is raving and the whole barber shop is upset.

The last sentence of this paragraph is interesting: "He had commanded troops at the front...and had been decorated for valor." Notice it is the only sentence in this paragraph that is explicitly passive. Its information, however, also tells something of McLendon's character--this great, crashing, valiant, white man is overbearing, probably brutish, and implicitly bloodthirsty. That's how I immediately pictured him, anyway.

A Sonatina

"Stranger in the Village" is like one of those classical sonatinas with multiple movements within the body of the piece.

Baldwin has one particular intent for his essay, but he seems to move through it in different stages with different tones. The first movement is quiet and explanatory. His sentences are clean, but rather choppy in rhythm. He says what he must for the sake of background, setting the reader up for the crescendo into the next movement: the village's reaction to him. The anger mounts in his tone--but only just so--and the reader can slowly feel Baldwin's veins start to pulse. --piano forte.

This is most evident when he talks about the American Negro's first "education"--that is, to "make people 'like' him." The "smile-and-the-world-smiles-with-you" routine did not work in Switzerland because "My smile was simply another unheard-of phenomenon which allowed them to see my teeth--they did not really see my smile and began to think that, should I take to snarling, no one would notice any difference." He goes on to say "there was yet no suggestion that I was human: I was simply a living a wonder." The tone of this sentence is layered with a matter of fact cover, yet obvious bitter undertones.

I think one way Baldwin navigates the turbulent political waters so well in this piece is through such sentence tone layering. A reader cannot deny the matter of fact cover--he is merely stating how the villagers' words and actions made him feel. Who are we to contest with that? Because he is simultaneously relating emotion, however, readers can easily pick up on his anger. Moreover, in sentences like "I knew that they did not mean to be unkind, and I know it now..." Baldwin immediately diffuses the reader's reaction to whatever it is he is going to say next. Again, Baldwin uses this tactic a few sentences later: "The children who shout Neger! have no way of knowing the eachoes this sound raises in me." He ends this diffusing paragraph with "People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them." Fortissimo.

The third movement quickly follows this statement and is not quiet in the least. Baldwin's bitterness is no longer an undertone as this movement progresses. --Mezzo forte--He is blatant and angry and throws out those harsh words "white man," "black man," our "PC" culture hates to hear and say. But Baldwin gets away with it because, again, he is describing his emotion, his--specific, though universal--experience with the reader. The sentence "I thought of white men arriving for the first time in an African village, astounded populace touching their hair and marveling at the color of their skin" prefaces the real meat of this movement: Baldwin's critique of the white man's attitude towards everyone and everything different from himself. Yet once again, Baldwin diffuses the explosive he threw over before it goes off. In the middle of accusing whites of having a superiority complex, he throws in a meek "whereas I, without a thought of conquest, find myself among a people whose culture controls me..." --Sforzando paino--The rest of this sentence is also explosive, but that beginning little "whereas I" conjures up empathy and makes the reader immediately side with Baldwin.

Through this description of Switzerland's naive villagers shouting "Neger!" at him--not unkindly, though--Baldwin makes a switch about half way through the essay. He crosses that "dreadful abyss" between the astonishment and naivety of Switzerland and the cruel, prejudice of America. --Fortissmo!-- He says "the abyss is experience, the American experience." This charged clause, however, is buried within the paragraph, allowing Baldwin to explain himself and again douse out the fuse.

This, I think, is his most blatant stylistic tactic--I'm sure there are many more I haven't yet picked up on--and probably his most effective. It is not as padded as a politician's speech, or apology for something crass or horrific, yet it is cushy with emotion. Emotion drives this essay, yet it also acts as a political airbag, allowing Baldwin to write about an objective topic subjectively.

IF ONLY

This is not my first time reading Joan Didion's "Goodbye To All That"--I read it once before in my freshman writing class--and I must admit I had almost identical reactions to it both times. Half of me wants to love Didion and her long, rambling sentences, yet the other half of me resents her because I cannot do what she can. The tone of this piece always gets to me, as well. I cannot relate to her homesickness and consistent bitterness towards New York.

That being said, Didion immediately sets the tone and the stage for her story of nostalgia in the very first sentence of the piece: "It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends." Right away the tone of "If only I knew then what I know now" appears and hangs over the story. Moreover, the words "harder to see the ends" instantly implies that this is a story of her past, and not necessarily one she likes. The following sentence appropriately adds to the tension already set by the first sentence. In fact, it entrenches us in her bitterness:

I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when new york began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was.

This massive four line sentence hands the reader Didion's bitterness towards these five blind years in New York. The hard "c" alliteration/assonance consistently strewn throughout the sentence adds to its bite. We feel the bite throughout the entirety of this excerpt because it left red marks on our hands it was so sharp.

At the end of the first paragraph, Didion says,

I know now that almost everyone wonders something like that, sooner or later and no matter what he or she is doing, but one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all avidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.

In this final and running sentence, Didion extends herself and her own maturing experience to the general world around her. Surely everyone else must and does go what she went through. She sees now that she was not the only one. This realisation is carried out throughout the story right until the very end.

Didion is actually very good at sticking to her themes. She is always connecting her story back to into itself and the structure of this is very admirable. In the second paragraph she says "was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that someone was." This connects easily back to the end of the first paragraph.

Also in the second paragraph I noticed that in the first sentence "Of course it might have been some other city had circumstances been different and the time been different and had I been different, might have been Paris or Chicago or even San Francisco..." she repeats the word "different" and though it isn't what Lanham would call "compulsive repetition" necessarily, it is noticeable and iterates her point well.

In this story Didion is continually dragging us into her blind past and then just as quickly dragging us back out of it into her all-knowing present. She says,

All I could do during those years was talk long-distance to the boy I already knew I would never marry in the spring. I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years.

In this sentence, Didion uses her long-winded, nostalgic sentence to effectively contrast with the shorter sentence and snap us back into the reality of the present.

When she talks about her first year in the city when she was "late to meet someone but stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peace and stood on the corner eating it" I find that passage to be the most potent and powerful of the whole story. She could "taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on [her] legs and [she] could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and [she] knew it would cost something sooner or later..." I live this memory with her every time I read it because somehow it comes to life with all the senses of that moment described.

She goes on to say that she felt that way because she did not belong there on Lexington Avenue, "but when you are twenty-two or twenty-three, you figure that later you will have a high emotional balance, and be able to pay whatever it costs....At that time making a living seemed a game to me, with arbitrary but quite inflexible rules." I connect these two distant sentences from the same paragraph because they are stated with a sense and tone of the impending future's reality. The whole piece is written like this, as I've said before. But it is these two sentences that she returns to in particular at the end of the piece and we finally learn what her learned. She did have to pay the costs, things were revocable and not everything was within her reach. And, more significantly, as the years went by, the Upper East Side truly made her sick. She was sick with lust for money--making a living was no longer a game, but a necessity. Didion expresses this very well. Again, this is where she extends herself and her experience from the specific to the general. Everyone realises what she realises eventually. I think despite the fact that she admits this the whole time, she is always surprised by it.

what it must feel like to have malaria.

This chapter of The Bell Jar moves slow. Ordinary movements and mundane days are recorded methodically because there is really just nothing else going on in Esther's world. I haven't read all of The Bell Jar, but this chapter truly was like living a slow, slurred summer day with nothing to do. As tired is this chapter is, though, it does contain a great deal of foreshadowing and implications of Esther's emotional instability.

The solitary line on the first page "What a hotchpotch the world was!" immediately implies several things: Esther is unfamiliar with the world around her, the unfamiliarity annoys and confuses her and she cannot be bothered with it. "Hotchpotch" is such an odd word, I think, and calls to mind a scrambled mess of thread that cannot be untangled. It is just impossible to solve. A few paragraphs further down, Esther describes the two diagonal lines of blood she's left dried on her cheeks. This makes me think she does not want to belong in the "hotchpotch" world and will make no attempt to. She says, "I didn't really see why people should look at me," but she knows why and I believe she relished the fact that they did. She wanted to set herself apart.

(Before I go on, let me just say that I cannot stand Plath's use of descriptive verbs. She overwrites dialogue like "the conductor bawled," and excessively uses descriptive action like "negotiated the long aisle." It's unnecessary and almost sounds like something you might find written by a freshman in a college writing class.)

As the chapter progresses, Esther further disembodies herself from her actions. When Judy calls and encourages her to go through with her summer plans, despite being rejected by the writing program, Esther cannot say yes. She cannot make herself do what she knows will potentially make her happy. Little by little, she loses control over her will: "I could just about afford it. But the hollow voice said, 'You'd better count me out.'...The minute I hung up, I knew I should have said I would come...I reached for the receiver. My hand advanced a few inches then retreated and fell limp. I forced it toward the receiver again, but again it stopped short, as if it had collided with a pane of glass." She cancels her registration for summer classes at the college with a "zombie voice" that is not really her own.

Esther is indecisive and uncommitted to the few decisions she does try to make. She says she won't live in the same house as her mother for more than a week, yet she stays. She tries to write a novel, but puts it on hold because she decides she needs more experience. She decides to switch majors, learn short hand, write her thesis, and maybe go to Germany; but she does none of these things. She has no control over her will or her wants, because her depression has taken her over. A "zombie" of a person replaces her, choking her off.

This chapter is thick and appropriately zombielike--every minute action of Esther's is recorded dutifully. Plath makes the reader aware of each crawling moment through Esther's short, methodical ramblings of thought and action. Her sentences are statements and short, tired descriptions. Thus the reader moves as Esther moves (slow and deliberate) and thinks with her (indecisively and indefinitely).