The Blurry, Muffled of Speak

A passage from Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson:

"The peanut butter locks my jaws closed. 

Emily: 'I don't believe it. Rumors are spread by jealous people. Hi, Andy. Did you bring enough lunch for everyone?' 

It feels like the Prince of Darkness has swept his cloak over the table. The lights dim. I shiver. Andy stands behind me to flirt with Emily. I lean into the table to stay as far away from him as I can. The table saws me in half. Emily's mouth moves, the fluorescent lights glittering on her teeth. The other girls scootch toward Emily to soak up her Attractiveness Rays. Andy must be talking too, I can feel deep vibrations in my backbone, like a thudding speaker. I can't hear the words. He twirls my ponytail in his fingers. Emily's eyes narrow. I mumble something idiotic and run for the bathroom. I heave lunch into the toilet, then wash my face with the ice water that comes out of the Hot faucet. Heather does not come looking for me."

This is an especially traumatic passage in the novel. Andy is the boy that raped Melinda during the summer, and this section really creeped me out when I was reading it--it still creeps me out.

Anderson's syntax is interesting here. She usually has a good mix of short simple sentences, but also complex, compound sentences. But here, because of the action of the scene, Anderson abandons compound sentences in lieu of crisp, short ones. The scene and the description gets herky-jerky like it is all Melinda can do to let us know what is going on. I also noticed that the scene begins with Melinda able to see and describe the people around her, and then it's almost as if the camera pulls in (maybe even inside her head) and the reader's vision becomes blurry and muffled. She can't understand what people are saying anymore, she just knows that they are talking and "can feel the deep vibrations in [her] backbone." This is the only sentence that has any complexity to it as well, which I think is extremely important. This is a tipping point, as we see two sentences later when Andy begins to twirl Melinda's ponytail. Anderson signals this to us by writing a more complex sentence. You may not notice it while you are reading quickly, but your brain does.

There are three instances of figurative language in this passage. Melinda compares Andy to Satan using a simile in the third paragraph; a pretty run-of-the-mill comparison. But then she says that "[t]he table saws [her] in half." Which seems like the point in the passage where the scene really becomes muffled. Almost like her head has been separated from the rest of her body, the signals no longer reaching her brain. And then Melinda compares the "deep vibrations" of Andy's voice to a "thudding speaker." It seems like a normal enough simile, but I think there is more we could consider here. When I think of a thudding speaker, I don't think of a speaker that is working correctly. I think of a speaker where something is wrong; the speaker has ripped and it has that strange vibration sound. When the bass hits the speaker hums and those vibrations spread throughout whatever the speaker is touching. Perhaps that is what Anderson is getting at with the word thudding? Which would make sense because of the effect Andy is having on Melinda in this scene. That thudding makes Melinda remember, which is turn causes her to throw up.

The passage is indeed disturbing, but Anderson does a marvelous job of composing a scene full of details that enrich further close-readings.

No Means No: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Mr. Collins, who annoys the dickens out of me pretty much every time he opens his mouth, has come to Hertfordshire to gain a wife. He wants to marry one of the Bennet daughters as he will one day inherit their family home and that would keep everything tidy and still within the Bennet family. In chapter 19, he has just proposed to Elizabeth:

"'You are too hasty, sir!" she cried. 'You forget that I have made no answer. Let me do it without further loss of time. Accept my thanks for the compliment you are paying me. I am very sensible of the honour of your proposals, but it is impossible for me to do otherwise than to decline them.' 

'I am not now to learn,' replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave of the hand, 'that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favour; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second, or even a third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.'"

She continues to reject Mr. Collins' proposals, eventually having to go to her parents to intervene. 

This exchange reminds me to Rochester's proposal to Jane in Jane Eyre, except that Jane does indeed want to marry Rochester, she just continues to say no because she worries about what society expects of her. 

This is a little different though. Mr. Collins is dense. He doesn't understand what is happening, he doesn't understand women, and most of all, he doesn't understand Elizabeth. His reply is rife with misogynistic phrases and ideals. First he calls Elizabeth "young" which can be attributed to a difference in age, but I believe that "young" here also connotes inexperienced and perhaps a bit of the backwardness of  country living. Collins doesn't expect Elizabeth to understand things because she hasn't "seen" the world as he has. She doesn't live in a large city, she hasn't traveled, and she certainly doesn't have the ear of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, as Mr. Collins has. He talks as if this is all a game and he has figured out the trick to winning: "it is usual with young ladies to reject and addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept." So, you're saying that women say no to men who they really want to marry because it is some sort of game? And then, in the end, he states that he will "lead" Elizabeth to the altar soon. "Lead"! He is going to "lead" her, like some domesticated animal? Like a horse, or a donkey? Can't she choose whom she wants to marry and the proper time to get married? Can't Elizabeth choose to reject your advances? Are men the only ones that can make decisions? I chuckled a couple times while reading this and the subsequent chapter because Elizabeth is so smart and quick witted, and Collins just doesn't understand. He is so sexist that it is comical. 

But it doesn't end there. Every year, we hear about college-aged men, in trouble with the law, because of things they do (or say) within their fraternities. Not all fraternities are populated with sexist, beer-guzzling jerks, but some are, and they are the ones that appear in the news. Every year we see these news-stories about women who said no, but these men didn't care. It's not that they misinterpreted, it's not that they didn't hear; these men want something and they will go to all lengths to get it. I don't see Mr. Collins playing beer-pong and wearing a visor sideways on his head, but his behavior in these chapters is a sign and type of things to come. Collins is the literary equivalent. He doesn't want to hear no, so he chooses not to. He will have Elizabeth and no other option is viable.

I feel like Collins would wear a visor like this if he were living in our era.

I haven't finished the novel, so I don't know if Collins redeems himself later on, but at this point, it is not looking good.

Song of Solomon: Macon Dead

I just started Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison. I am on page 10; my Kindle says that I have 11 hours and 14 minutes left in the book. This is my first book from Morrison. I've heard good things, heard that she has a lot in common with Faulkner and McCarthy. So, I was happy to discover this description of Macon Dead.

"Solid, rumbling, likely to erupt without prior notice, Macon kept each member of his family awkward with fear. His hatred of his wife glittered and sparked in every word he spoke to her. The disappointment he felt in his daughters sifted down on them like ash, dulling their buttery complexions and chocking the lilt out of what should have been girlish voices. Under the frozen heat of his glance they tripped over doorsills and dropped the salt cellar into the yolks of their poached eggs. The way he mangled their grace, wit, and self-esteem was the single excitement of their days. Without the tension and drama he ignited, they might not have known what to do with themselves. In his absence his daughters bent their necks over blood-red squares of velvet and waited eagerly for any hint of him, and his wife, Ruth, began her days stunned into stillness by her husband's contempt and ended them wholly animated by it."

It is always reassuring to be reading a new book and find those passages which assure you that you are dealing with a master writer. I love so much of what is going on in his quote. You get an absolutely perfect description of this man; you can visualize him. You understand his personality. This is not a soft man, not a tender man. Macon Dead is harsh and controlling. The imagery of his hatred glittering and sparking and finally sifting down on his daughters like ash is evocative. It describes the idea perfectly. Then Morrison adds in some sarcasm, "Without the tension and drama he ignited, they might not have known what to do with themselves." I am confident that these young women would have been perfectly fine without their father lording over them. They would have found something to occupy their time. But this helps the reader to understand the control and Macon Dead has over his family. They need his permission to do things. They remain beholden to his demands.

Finding Terrific Writing in Unusual Places: Red Seas Under Red Skies

 Sometimes I worry that people see me as a bit of a literature snob. My favorites include such literary giants as Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Joyce, Shakespeare, and McCarthy. But I also am a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy literature. I love sitting down and just enjoying a fast paced adventure. Recently I have been enjoying Red Seas Under Red Skies, by Scott Lynch. In many cases, fantasy books are not written very well. I mean they convey action fine enough, but the beauty of the sentence is lacking. Not true with Lynch. He is an accomplished writer that has perfected his craft, he just chooses to write fantasy novels. Here is a nice paragraph from chapter two.

"Jean cleared the barrier from the third-floor hallway, left a few more coins (from Locke's purse) with the bemused innkeeper, and bustled about the room, allowing some of the smell of drunken enclosure to evaporate out the open window. Upon reflection, he went down to the bar and came back with a glass decanter of water."

This paragraph is, in essence, two sentences. The first is far more complicated than the second. We have a list in the first sentence: Jean is accomplishing three tasks. Lynch uses the oxford comma before the conjunction--my man! The sentence becomes slightly more complicated though with the final phrase attached to the list with a comma. And he has some great 50 cent words in here: bemused, enclosure, evaporate, and decanter. If this were a lesser writer the amount of attention would not have been given to such an insignificant paragraph. I have read quite a bit of bad writing in fantasy and Sci Fi novels and it is so refreshing when you find someone who is a master of his craft. 

Not what I though Lynch would look like. See, you learn new things all the time.

Significance of the River Dirce in Antigone

My students have been reading Antigone, by Sophocles, and recently I asked them to do a close reading of the Parados as one of their blog posts. For the most part, the blog posts were right on track. Students were identifying metaphors and personification. But one question seemed to stump most--if not all--of my students. I believe it was simply because they didn't dig deep enough in their research for the question, choosing instead to stick with the first answer they found. And maybe stump is too harsh a word, they just needed to push a little bit more and they would have had it. Now to the question:

What is the significance of Polynieces and Etocles fighting in the river Dirce?

Most students were able to re-tell the story of Dirce in mythology, but failed to find the information that all Theban kings were sworn into office while standing before Dirce's tomb. Thus, Polynieces and Etocles fighting each other--over the Theban crown, no less--in the river Dirce, becomes symbolic because they are fighting for the right to rule in the river named after the tomb where they swear in Theban kings. 

Antigone is usually pretty straight forward, not a lot of symbols or literary devices. But, in the Parados we have this rich symbolism where we get more by understanding the mythology 

One student got it right though. Check out her blog posts here:
http://susiequeen16.blogspot.com/

McCarthy's Use of the Complex Sentence

Still reading The Crossing, by Cormac McCarthy. Got into part two and my reading just really slowed down. It's not that it isn't interesting, just that there is a ton to process. Here is a quote from part 2, page 129:

"They rode the high country for weeks and they grew thin and gaunted man and horse and the horse grazed on the sparse winter grass in the mountains and gnawed the lichens from the rock and the boy shot trout with his arrows where they stood above their shadows on the cold stone floors of the pools and he ate them and ate green nopal and then on a windy day traversing a high saddle in the mountains a hawk passed before the sun and its shadow ran so quick in the grass before them that it caused the horse to shy and the boy looked up where the bird turned high above them and he took the bow from his shoulder and nocked and loosed an arrow and watched it rise with the wind rattling the fletching slotted into the cane and watched it turning and arcing and the hawk wheeling and then flaring suddenly with the arrow locked in its pale breast."

If you have ever read McCarthy (or Faulkner, or Morrison for that matter) you know that he likes the long sentence. Part of his style. In this case I believe that McCarthy is using this to suggest that time is passing, but it seems that all of time is sloughing into itself. You cannot really tell when things are happening; it seems that it is all happening at once. All at one time. His use of the conjunction "and" accomplishes this task. The sentence isn't incorrect, just very long and drawn out. It helps the reader to feel the exhausting nature of this journey. And this happened, and this happened, and this happened. I don't think that most writers should use this style. This is reserved for those masters who are allowed to break the rules.

P6: I felt a funeral in my brain CCCR

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P5: Because I could not stop for death CCCR

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Poetic Turns

The newest poem from Linebreak is a great example of poetic turns. Here is the poem:

Against Aristophanes

by Jacques Rancourt

                                                  No e-mails can reach you.
                                                  No texts. Here, a smokestack

                                                  chokes up soot intermittently.
                                                  Cloud-makers, I once called them,

                                    (5)         and what a world if that were true.
                                                  At the window I tap from

                                                  the interior and wait for the ghost
                                                  to write back. Only the willow,

                                                  starved for water, responds
                                    (10)       by clicking a beaded branch

                                                  against the glass. At one end
                                                  of a parking lot, a Target bag

                                                  skims the pavement,
                                                  drifts before a thing whose stillness

                                    (15)        I took to be a truck at rest,
                                                  moonlight on chrome,

                                                  its driver asleep across the seats.
                                                  How his mother, if she lives,

                                                  must worry. I wake and wait
                                    (20)       for you to call at this lavender hour.

                                                  Nothing strange inside
                                                  your heartbeat, irregular as it was,

                                                  nothing but your blood's drum,
                                                  your mysterious body

                                     (25)      more mysterious now,
                                                  more foreign for being

                                                  outside of me. I thought
                                                  we were made of water,

                                                  one soul split into two,
                                     (30)      but we are made of canyon,

                                                  a sky unpolluted by light
                                                  and thus filled with light,

                                                  a moon so full
                                                  if reveals the desert to be

                                      (35)     in motion: a coyote stalking
                                                  a trickle of water,

                                                  a wren skipping nail to nail
                                                  on the arm of a cactus.

I see two distinct turns in this poem. The beginning of the poem has these wonderful images, all of them charged with some imaginal energy. I like the image of the smokestack smoking away. The narrator taps against the glass, watching a Target bag drifting through the parking lot like some wrath--"At one end / of a parking lot, a Target bag / skims the pavement, / drifts before a thing whose stillness /  I took to be a truck at rest, / moonlight on chrome," All very beautiful! The poem is focused on describing all of these images, a very image heavy poem. And then it turns in line 19-- "I wake and wait / for you to call at this lavender hour." Now we are inside the narrators head again and he (I'm assuming it is a male) is dreaming of "your mysterious body" (which I am assuming is a girl).

But it doesn't stop there. In his contemplation he continues to look inward. To examine this relationship and how it effects him and his sense of self. On this inward journey, the narrator turns the poem again in line 27--"I thought / we were made of water, / one soul split into two, / but we are made of canyon," Now we turn into a metaphor. These two people, man and woman, are "made of canyon." They cannot be further from each other; they are different.

Some wonderful final images as well.

• "a coyote stalking / a trickle of water, / a wren skipping nail to nail / on the arm of a cactus."

McCarthy and the Mundane

Beautiful passage on page 22 of The Crossing:

"He took the deerhide gloves our of the basket and pulled them on and with a trowel he dug a hole in the ground and put the drag in the hole and piled the chain in after it and covered it up again. Then he excavated a shallow place in the ground the shape of the trap springs and all. He tried the trap in it and then dug some more. He put dirt in the screenbox as he dug and hen he laid the trowel by and took a pair of c-clamps from the basket and with them screwed down the springs until the jaws fell open. He held the trap up and eyed the notch in the pan while he backed off one screw and adjusted the trigger. Crouched in the broken shadow with the sun at his back and holding the trap at eyelevel against the morning sky he looked to be truing some older, some subtler instrument. Astrolabe or sextant. Like a man bent at fixing himself someway in the world. Bent on trying by arc or chord the space between his being and the world that was. If there be such a space. If it be knowable. He put his hand under the open jaws and tilted the pan slightly with his thumb."

Couple of ideas here.

McCarthy excels at the complex compound sentence, like Faulkner and Morrison before him. His repetition of the conjunctions makes the sentence go on and on and on.

But at the end the image of a man bent against the shadowy sky, "fixing himself." That image is illuminating. Billy and his father are out setting traps to catch a wolf that is killing members of their herd. This "quest" (more on that later) is completing these men. Billy's father is becoming himself while doing this semi-mundane and pedestrian task--setting traps. But all of a sudden it becomes the most important task in the entire world. Maybe because he is passing knowledge on to his son. Or perhaps because man needs a quest; man needs something to do. Billy sees his father in a much more ancient light. Like he is some renaissance man measuring the universe. And why can't he be?

The Drowned, by Al Maginnes

Another beautiful poem this week from Linebreak, The Drowned, by Al Maginnes. It also includes a wonderful reading of the poem by Penelope Pelizzon.

The Drowned

by Al Maginnes

                              Already the first of the year has entered
                                        the calm prayer of the lake and become
                              a part of it, his last essential song trapped
                                        forever below the surface, blued syllables
               (5)          slipped from the vessel of his body.
                                        They remain though the rest of him was
                              raised, pale, a creature of half-land, half-water.
                                        Spring and summer claim their share
                              of drunken boaters, careless fishermen.
               (10)                  But rarely this early in the year, this close
                              to shore. I know that bend of water, how shallow
                                        it stands close to the bank. Only
                              the very drunk or unlucky, only one determined
                                        not to rise would slide under and stay.
               (15)        When I was fourteen, a minister who professed
                                        a home-brewed faith of his own sent
                              blurred photos of himself walking on water
                                        to a newspaper. When a covey
                              of reporters came to see the feat repeated,
               (20)                  the minister announced he could not
                              perform miracles in the face of such doubt.
                                        He left the brown river untrod, returned
                              to his congregation whose prayers would
                                        rise like floodwaters, unstopped by doubt.
               (25)         Deep in the gummy mud that is the lake's floor,
                                        the last words of the drowned burrow
                              deeper than any prayers can reach, preserved
                                        in water where no miracles come to pass.

I just want to focus on the first sentence of this poem, which spans several poetic lines. 

"Already the first of the year has entered / the calm prayer of the lake and become / a part of it, his last essential song trapped / forever below the surface, blued syllables / slipped from the vessel of his body."

Maginnes has some interesting language here--interesting use of pronouns. 

In the beginning we have the "first of the year" entering "the calm prayer of the lake." So the actor is the "first of the year," the action is entering. And what is the "first of the year" entering? "[T]he calm prayer of the lake." It isn't entering the lake, it is entering a prayer. 

Then the "first of the year" "become[s] part of it." What is it? The lake? The calm prayer? The calm prayer of the lake? I think the answer is yes. Can you really separate a lake from it's calm prayer?

Then Maginnes uses the male pronoun--"his." As in "his last essential song trapped / forever below the surface." I am assuming that the his refers back to the "first of the year" since that is our character. The first of the year is a he?

Well, regardless, it is a beautiful, interesting line of poetry.

Poetry Warms the Soul

Today in my AP Literature and Composition classes, I introduced poetry. We did a fun activity and then start by reading a easy Seamus Heaney poem. But. my students groaned when I told them we were introducing poetry. GROANED! Of course, I made them fix that; had some students cheer for poetry. I'm hoping that they just haven't had many good experiences with poetry, and hopefully we will fix that this year. Hopefully they will accept that poetry is good for them, just like green beans are good for them. They still might not cheers, but secretly they will know.

Today I wanted to blog about poetry since it was on my mind, but I had a hard time finding a recent poem that spoke to me. Nothing was really striking my fancy until I stopped by Poetry Magazine. I decided to try one of the featured poems, and wow!


And so, I present: Marine Snow, by Miriam Gamble--

          The memory of sun, it is what they subsist upon
          down where the jaws snap blindly
          at whatever passes, where drifter is a meaningless term

          and to hunt is to proffer teeth and tongue
          and ghost-lit lantern
          into a sea like liquid wind,
          without prior compass
          of the way the wind is blowing.

          Should they be gifted with a corpse
          whose half-spoilt flesh holds distillate
          eternal summers
          spent glittering in the euphotic zone,
          they will give gross thanks and, in their way, be holy.

          In the cartography of sea,
          they are kin not to dragons nor the Stella Maris
          but to your own bright band--

          yes, you there, eating your sunlight secondhand
          from a long-gone grocery display,
          drinking it from the guts of lazy lemons.

Holy cow! This poem is a beaut! First some definitions:

• Marine Snow--"is a continuous shower of mostly organic detritus falling from the upper layers of the [ocean]. It is a significant means of exporting energy from the [top of the ocean, down to the bottom of the ocean]."
• Euphotic Zone--again, a part of the ocean, the upper layers. Sticking with this whole upper ocean levels feeding the lower levels.
• Stella Maris--north star, Polaris

There is so much we could analyze in this poem, but the sounds really stood out to me. The sounds in this poem hit the ear with such beauty. Let's just look at a couple phrases in closer detail.

• "[...] proffer teeth and tongue / and ghost-lit lantern"--teeth and tongue is alliteration and I love me some alliteration. Also some alliteration with "ghost-lit lantern." But the word "proffer" gets me. Gorgeous sound in this line.
• "[...] whose half-spoilt flesh holds distillate / eternal summers / spent glittering in the euphotic zone"--these lines sound so good. I love the bevy of "T" sounds going on in these lines. Makes a rat-tat-tat when you read it. A machine gun of "T's."
• "sunlight secondhand"
• "long-gone grocery display,"
• "guts of lazy lemons."

I think you get the picture though, now here is the point--

This poem is about getting our sunlight through our food. That, in reality, we eat sunlight. Everything lives off of the sun, we need it to survive. This is a science poem. Fish living in the deepest depths of the ocean need sunlight, and humans do too. It is a poem about eating sunlight. That is beautiful. 

But who really cares what the poem is about. Does it really matter? Does it matter what the poem was about? Or if we connected to the topic as a reader? Maybe. In the end, this poem, this poet spoke to me. Her words, her ideas, her soul, jumped out of the page, across space and time, and told me something. Something about life, and being connected, and being human. I felt fed. I felt better about the world. I felt better about myself. If you can get that from poetry than it is a worthwhile endeavor to read it.

Eat those lazy lemons, and read your poetry!

John Green & The Road Less Traveled

An Open Letter to John Green.

Dear John Green,

First, big fan! I've been watching Vlogbrothers and Crash Course for several years now, Vlogbrothers for longer obviously. I love the things you and Hank do, but more than anything I love this video.

Let me explain...

I like Robert Frost. His poetry is wonderful, deep, and full of interesting discussions. My favorite is Out, Out. But I have to tell you, it really frustrates me when people misinterpret and misread The Road Not Taken. This happens most often in church and in the English classes I teach at school.

So, thank you for doing your part in correcting this rampant problem.

Best Wishes,

Mr. Allen


Now, lets get this poem on the screen and dig in.

                         Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
                         And sorry I could not travel both
                         And be one traveler, long I stood
                         And looked down one as far as I could
               (5)     To where it bent in the undergrowth;

                        Then took the other, as just as fair,
                        And having perhaps the better claim,
                        Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
                        Though as for that the passing there
              (10)   Had worn them really about the same,

                       And both that morning equally lay
                       In leaves no step had trodden black.
                       Oh, I kept the first for another day!
                       Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
             (15)    I doubted if I should ever come back.

                        I shall be telling this with a sigh
                        Somewhere ages and ages hence:
                        Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
                        I took the one less traveled by,
             (20)    And that has made all the difference.

I understand and totally subscribe to the idea that people can read poetry and glean any message that is meaningful to them, but let me explain to you how I interpret this poem.

Many people misinterpret this poem by saying that (much like John Green in the video was saying) that by taking the "road less traveled" your life will be better or meaningful. It happens in church all the time. People like to interpret this poem saying that if you follow the straight and narrow you will eventually reach heaven because you took the "road less traveled by." That is a nice message and all, but unfortunately that is not what Frost was getting at.

So we have the speaker, he is walking through the woods, he comes to a fork in the road, he looks down both paths. One path is well worn, and the other is "grassy and wanted wear." But then look at lines 9 & 10: "Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same," Frost contradicts himself. One road isn't better than the other. One isn't less worn, they are pretty much the same. So does it really matter if you choose one path over the other? Let's keep reading.

In line 11, Frost uses the word "equally" to once again discuss how these two paths are the same. Then he says that "[he] kept the first for another day!" He'll just come back and travel the other road some other time. Sounds good. But, oh, wait, "Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back." So you're not going to come back? Well then why did you say you would. You contradicted yourself again. NOT COOL ROBERT FROST!

So then we get to the final stanza. Where the speaker envisions himself in the future, detailing to generations of his offspring how he took the path that was "less traveled" and "that has made all the difference." That's the end right? Poem over? Not so fast. The problem is that it didn't make all the difference. The speaker cannot know that his path was any better than the other because

1. the paths were "worn [...] about the same." and
2. he never took the other path, "I doubted if I should ever come back," so how can he know that the path he took made all the difference.

This is how I interpret this poem. If we read closely we find contradictions. I love to use this poem to teach Deconstruction when we study Critical Lenses in AP Literature and Composition.

Close reading is the best!

A Sentence from William Faulkner

Man knows how to sport a pipe.

I love William Faulkner!

I really wish we could do more with him in AP Literature and Composition, but some of his books are very difficult and harder to access when reading. As I Lay Dying is one of my all time faves. But we do get to read A Rose for Emily, which I guess will just have to do.

I wanted to highlight just one sentence from this story, because I doubt we will find the time to actually discuss this sentence in class. Faulkner (as well as Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy) loves complex, compound sentences, and this one is a great example.

"The held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men--some in their brushed Confederate uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years."

Woah! What a sentence! There is so much going on, let's break it down a little:

• sibilant = hissing
• macabre = disturbing or horrifying
• Tons of appositive phrases
• "with the crayon face of her father musing[...]"
• "some in their brushed Confederate uniforms"
• "believing that they had danced with her[...]"
• All of these appositive phrases could be taken out, but think of what you would lose if you did. This sentence wouldn't nearly be as rich.
• Faulkner uses commas, a semicolon, and dashes to punctuate this monster.
• We start out with very concrete images: the funeral, Miss Emily in her coffin, the ladies hissing to each other. But then the sentence shifts into very imaginal territory. At the end of the sentence we are discussing the progression of time, how it is not a diminishing road, but a huge meadow, no winter can touch it, narrow bottle-necks. All of these ending images are very symbolic. 
• This sentence is a masterpiece in its own right. Faulkner was a genius.