English: Composition and Literature

Proportion. One thing further should be said regarding Mass. Not everything can stand first or last; some important details must be placed in the midst of a description. These particulars will not be of equal importance. The more important details may be given their proportionate emphasis by relatively increasing the length of their treatment. If one detail is more important than another, it requires more to be said about it; unimportant matters should be passed over with a word. Proportion in the length of treatment is a guide to the relative importance of the matters introduced into a description.

In the description of “The House of Usher,” position emphasizes the barely perceptible fissure. Proportion singles out the crumbling condition of the individual stones and makes this detail more emphatic than either the discoloration or the fungi. And in Newman’s description, the olive-tree, the brilliant atmosphere, the thyme, the bees, all add to the charms of bright and beautiful Athens; but most of all the Ægean, with its chain of islands, its dark violet billows, its jets of silver, the heaving and panting of its long waves,—the restless living element fascinates and enraptures “yon pilgrim student.” Position and proportion are the means of emphasis in a paragraph of description.

Arrangement must be natural. Having settled the massing of the description, the next matter for consideration is the arrangement. In order that the parts of a description may be coherent, hold together, they should be arranged in the order in which they would naturally be perceived. What strikes the eye of the beholder as most important, often the general characteristic of the whole, should be mentioned first; and the details should follow as they are seen. In a building, the usual way of observing and describing is from foundation to turret stone. A landscape may be described by beginning with what is near and extending the view; this is common. Sometimes the very opposite plan is pursued; or one may begin on either hand and advance toward the other. Of a person near by, the face is the first thing observed; for it is there that his character can be best discovered. Afterward details of clothing follow as they would naturally be noticed. If a person be at a distance his pose and carriage would be about all that could be seen; as he approaches, the other details would be mentioned as they came into view. To arrange details in the order in which they are naturally observed will result in an association in the description of the details that are contiguous in the objects. Jumping about in a description is a source of confusion. How entirely it may ruin a paragraph can be estimated by the effect upon this single sentence, “He was tall, with feet that might have served for shovels, narrow shoulders, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, long arms and legs, and his whole frame most loosely hung together.” This rearrangement makes but a disjointed and feeble impression; and the reason is entirely that an order in which no person ever observed a man has been substituted for the commonest order,—from head to foot. Arrange details so that the parts which are contiguous shall be associated in the description, and proceed in the order in which the details are naturally observed.

The following is by Irving; he is describing the stage-coachman:—

“He has commonly a broad, full face, curiously mottled with red, as if the blood had been forced by hard feeding into every vessel of the skin; he is swelled into jolly dimensions by frequent potations of malt liquors, and his bulk is still further increased by a multiplicity of coats, in which he is buried like a cauliflower, the upper one reaching to his heels. He wears a broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat; a huge roll of colored handkerchief about his neck, knowingly knotted and tucked in at the bosom; and has in summer time a large bouquet of flowers in his buttonhole, the present, most probably, of some enamored country lass. His waistcoat is commonly of some bright color, striped, and his small-clothes extend far below the knees, to meet a pair of jockey boots which reach about half way up his legs.”12

Use Familiar Images. When the materials have been selected and arranged, the hardest part of the work has been done. It now remains to express in language the picture. A few suggestions regarding the kind of language will be helpful. The writer must always bear in mind the fact that in constructing a mental picture each reader does it from the images he already possesses. “Quaint arabesques” is without meaning to many persons; and until the word has been looked up in the dictionary, and the picture seen there, the beautiful line of “Sir Launfal” suggests no image whatever. So when Stevenson speaks of the birds in the “clerestories of the wood cathedral,” the image is not distinct in the mind of a young American. Supposing a pupil in California were asked to describe an orange to an Esquimau. He might say that it is a spheroid about the size of an apple, and the color of one of Lorraine’s sunsets. This would be absolutely worthless to a child of the frigid zone. Had he been told that an orange was about the size of a snowball, much the color of the flame of a candle, that the peeling came off like the skin from a seal, and that the inside was good to eat, he would have known more of this fruit. The images which lie in our minds and from which we construct new pictures are much like the blocks that a child-builder rearranges in many different forms; but the blocks do not change. From them he may build a castle or a mill; yet the only difference is a difference in arrangement. So it is with the pictures we build up in imagination: our castle in Spain we have never seen, but the individual elements which we associate to lift up this happy dwelling-place are the things we know and have seen. A reader creates nothing new; all he does is to rearrange in his own mind the images already familiar. Only so may he pass from the known to the unknown.

The fact that we construct pictures of what we read from those images already in our minds warns the writer against using materials which those for whom he writes could not understand. It compels him to select definite images, and it urges him to use the common and the concrete. It frequently drives him to use comparisons.

Use of Comparisons. To represent the extremely bare and unornamented appearance of a building, one might write, “It looked like a great barn,” or “It was a great barn.” In either case the image would be definite, common, and concrete. In both cases there is a comparison. In the first, where the comparison is expressed, there is a simile; in the second, where the comparison is only implied, there is a metaphor. These two figures of speech are very common in description, and it is because they are of great value. One other is sometimes used,—personification, which ascribes to inanimate things the attributes of life which are the property of animate nature. What could be happier than this by Stevenson: “All night long he can hear Nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest she turns and smiles”? or this, “A faint sound, more like a moving coolness than a stream of air”? And at the end of the chapter which describes his “night under the pines,” he speaks of the “tapestries” and “the inimitable ceiling” and “the view which I command from the windows.” In this one chapter are personification, simile, metaphor,—all comparisons, and doing what could hardly be done without them. Common, distinct, concrete images are surest.

Choice of Words. Adjectives and Nouns. To body forth these common, distinct, concrete images calls for a discriminating choice of words; for in the choice of words lies a large part of the vividness of description. If the thing described be unknown to the reader, it requires the right word to place it before him; if it be common, still must the right word be found to set it apart from the thousand other objects of the same class. The words that may justly be called describing words are adjectives and nouns; and of these the adjective is the first descriptive word. The rule that a writer should never use two adjectives where one will do, and that he should not use one if a noun can be found that completely expresses the thought, is a good one to follow. One certain stroke of the crayon is worth a hundred lines, each approaching the right one. One word, the only one, will tell the truth more vividly than ten that approach its expression. For it must be remembered that a description must be done quickly; every word that is used and does nothing is not only a waste of time, but is actually in the way. In a description every word must count. It may be a comparison, an epithet, personification, or what not, but whatever method is adopted, the right word must do it quickly.

How much depends on the nice choice of words may be seen by a study of the selections already quoted; and especially by a careful reading of those by Stevenson and Everett. To show the use of adjectives and nouns in description, the following from Kipling is a good illustration. Toomai had just reached the elephants’ “ball-room” when he saw—

“white-tusked wild males, with fallen leaves and nuts and twigs lying in the wrinkles of their necks and the folds of their ears; fat, slow-footed she-elephants, with restless pinky-black calves only three or four feet high, running under their stomachs; young elephants with their tusks just beginning to show, and very proud of them; lanky, scraggy, old-maid elephants, with their hollow, anxious faces, and trunks like rough bark; savage old bull-elephants, scarred from shoulder to flank with great weals and cuts of by-gone fights, and the caked dirt of their solitary mud bath dropping from their shoulders; and there was one with a broken tusk and the marks of the full-stroke, the terrible drawing scrape of a tiger’s claw on his side.”13

One third of the words in this paragraph are descriptive nouns and adjectives, none of which the reader wishes to change.

Use of Verbs. Verbs also have a great value in description. In the paragraph picturing the dawn, Stevenson has not neglected the verbs. “Welled,” “whitened,” “trembled,” “brightened,” “warmed,” “kindled,” and so on through the paragraph. Try to change them, and it is apparent that something is lost by any substitution. Kaa, the python, “pours himself along the ground.” If he is angry, “Baloo and Bagheera could see the big swallowing-muscles on either side of Kaa’s throat ripple and bulge.“

Yet in the choice of words, one may search for the bizarre and unusual rather than for the truly picturesque. Stevenson at times seems to have lapsed. When he says that Modestine would feel a switch “more tenderly than my cane;” that he “must instantly maltreat this uncomplaining animal,” meaning constantly; and at another place that he “had to labor so consistently with” his stick that the sweat ran into his eyes, there is a suspicion of a desire for the sensational rather than the direct truth. On the other hand, the beginner finds himself using words that have lost, their meaning through indiscriminate usage. “Awful good,” “awful pretty,” and “awful sweet” mean something less than good, pretty, and sweet. “Lovely,” “dear,” “splendid,” “unique,” and a large number of good words have been much dulled by the ignorant use of babblers. Superlatives and all words denoting comparison should be used with stinginess. One cannot afford to part with this kind of coin frequently; the cheaper coins should be used, else he will find an empty purse when need arises. Thackeray has this: “Her voice was the sweetest, low song.” How much better this, Her voice was a sweet, low song. All the world is shut out from this, while in the former he challenges the world by the comparison. Shakespeare was wiser when he made Lear say,—

“Her voice was ever soft,Gentle, and low,—an excellent thing in woman.”

Avoid words which have lost their meaning by indiscriminate use; shun the sensational and the bizarre; use superlatives with economy; but in all you do, whether in unadorned or figurative language, choose the word that is quick and sure and vivid—the one word that exactly suggests the picture.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND EXERCISESQUESTIONSTHE OLD MANSE(Riverside Literature Series, No. 69.)

Are there narrative portions in “The Old Manse”? paragraphs of exposition?

Do you term the whole narration, description, or exposition? Why?

Frame a sentence which you think would be an adequate topic sentence for the whole piece.

What phrase in the first paragraph allows the author to begin the second with the words, “Nor, in truth, had the Old Manse,” etc.? Where in the second paragraph is found the words which are the source of “my design,” mentioned in the third? How does the author pass from the fourth paragraph to the fifth? In the same way note the connections between the succeeding paragraphs. They are most skillfully dovetailed together. Now make a list of the phrases in the first fifteen pages which introduce paragraphs, telling from what in the preceding paragraph each new paragraph springs. Do you think that such a felicitous result just happened? or did Hawthorne plan it?

Does Hawthorne generally introduce his descriptions by giving the feeling aroused by the object described, a method very common with Poe?

In the paragraph beginning at the bottom of p. 18, what do you think of the selection of material? What have guided in the inclusion and exclusion of details?

Write a paragraph upon this topic: There could not be a more joyous aspect of external nature than as seen from the windows of my study just after the passing of a cooling shower. Be careful to select things that have been made happy, and to use adjectives and nouns that are full of joy.

Make a list of the words used to describe “The Old Apple Dealer.”

Has this description Unity?

What relation to the whole has the first sentence of paragraph three? the last?

Do you think there is a grammatical error in the third sentence of this paragraph?

By contrasts to what has Hawthorne brought out better the character of the Apple Dealer? When can contrasts help?

AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE, AND OTHER POEMS(Riverside Literature Series, No. 30.)

In this poem what purpose is served by the first two stanzas?

Where in the landscape does the author begin? Which way does he progress?

Quote stanzas in which other senses than sight are called upon.

Make a list of the figures of speech. How many similes? metaphors? examples of personification? Which seems most effective? Which instance of its use do you prefer? Has Lowell used too many figures?

Read “The Oak,” “The Dandelion,” and “Al Fresco.”

Are they description or exposition? Do they bear out Lowell’s estimate of himself?

THE SKETCH-BOOK(Riverside Literature Series, Nos. 51, 52.)

Why has Irving given four pages to the description of Sleepy Hollow before he introduces Ichabod Crane?

Why, then, seven pages to Ichabod before the story begins?

What gives the peculiar interest to this tale?

In the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” how many paragraphs of description close with an important detail?

In how many with a general characterization?

In all the descriptions of buildings by Irving that you have read, what are the first things mentioned,—size, shape, color, or what? Make a list, so as to be sure.

Does Irving use many comparisons? Are the likenesses to common things? Select the ten you think best. Are there more in narrative or descriptive passages? What do you gather from this fact?

In “Christmas Day,” on p. 51 (R. L. S., No. 52), does Irving proceed from far to near in the landscape? Is this common? Find another example.

How has Irving emphasized the littleness of the minister described on p. 56 (R. L. S., No. 52)?

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER(Riverside Literature Series, No. 119.)

Is the arrangement of the details in the last two lines of the first paragraph stronger than the arrangement of the same details on p. 63? Why, or why not?

In the description of the hall, pp. 67 and 68, do the details produce the effect upon you which they did upon Poe?

Find a description in this piece which closes with an important detail.

Is Usher described at all when Poe says, “I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe”? Do the details enumerated arouse such feelings in you? Would the feeling have been called forth if it had not been suggested by Poe? Is there, then, any advantage in this method of opening a description?

What good was done by describing Usher as Poe knew him in youth?

Why is the parenthetical clause on p. 72 necessary?

On p. 80, should Poe write “previously to its final interment”?

What do you think of the length of the sentence quoted on p. 85?

Does Poe use description to accent the mood of the narrative, or to make concrete the places and persons?

Why is “The Haunted Palace” introduced into the story?

Is this story as good as “The Gold-Bug”?

SILAS MARNER(Riverside Literature Series, No. 83.)

Why is not the early history of Silas Marner related first in the story?

By what steps has the author approached the definite time?

From the fragments about his appearance, do you get a clear idea of how Marner looks?

Do you approve this method of scattering the description along through the story? Write a description of Marner on the night he was going to the tavern.

Could not the quarrel between Godfrey and Dunsey been omitted?

Describe the interior of Marner’s cottage.

Why should Sally Oates and her dropsy be admitted to the story?

Do you know as well how George Eliot’s characters look as how they think and feel?

What do you think of the last sentence of Chapter IV.? Why does not Chapter V. go on with Dunsey’s story? Why is Chapter VI. introduced at all? What of its close?

What figure in the last sentence of Chapter X.?

Would you prefer to know how tall Eppie was, what kind of clothes she wore, etc., to the knowledge you gain of her on p. 178?

Suppose that Dunsey came home the night he staked Wildfire, recite the conversation between him and Godfrey.

Have Dolly Winthrop, Priscilla Lammeter, and Mr. Macey talk over “The New Minister.”

Write on “What I see in George Eliot’s Face.”

THE DESERTED VILLAGE(Riverside Literature Series, No. 68.)

Is this piece description or exposition?

In the first stanza where is the topic sentence?

The author has made two groups of charms. Would it be as well to change them about? Give your reasons.

Where has he used the ear instead of the eye to suggest his picture? Is it clear?

What method is adopted in lines 125-128? See also lines 237-250.

Can you unite the paragraphs on p. 25? Why do you think so?

Could you suggest a new arrangement of details in lines 341-362 that would be as good as the present? What are the last four lines for?

EXERCISES

Enumerative Description may well employ a few lessons. In it accuracy of detail must be studied, and every detail must be introduced.

1. The Teacher’s Desk.

2. Write a letter to a carpenter giving details for the construction of a small bookcase.

3. By telling how you made it, describe a camp, a kite, a dress, or a cake. Narration may be employed for the purpose of description. A good example may be found in “Robinson Crusoe” in the chapter describing his home after the shipwreck.

4. Describe an unfurnished room. Shape, size, position, and number of windows, the fireplace, etc., should be definite. Be sure to give the point of view. To say “On my right hand,” “In front of me,” or any similar phrases means nothing unless the reader knows where you are.

In these exercises the pupil will doubtless employ the paragraph of particulars. This is the most common in description. Other forms are valuable.

1. Using a paragraph telling what it was not, finish this: I followed the great singer to her home. Imagine my surprise in finding that the house in which this lady lived was not a home of luxury and splendor,—not even a home of comfort. Go on with the details of a home of luxury which were not there. Finish with what you did see. This is really a description of two houses set in artistic contrast to heighten the effect. Remember you are outside.

2. By the use of comparison finish this: The home of my poor little friend was but little better than a barn. Choose only such details as emphasize the barn-like appearance of the home. There is but one room. Remember where you are standing; and keep in mind the effect you wish to produce.

3. Using a moving point of view, describe an interior. Do not have too many rooms.

4. Furnish the room described in number four to suit your taste. Tell how it looks. Remember that a few things give character to a room.

5. Describe your childhood’s home as it would look to you after years of absence.

6. Using a paragraph of the obverse, describe the appearance of the house from which you were driven by the cruelty of a drunken father.

7. Describe a single tree standing alone in a field. It will be well for the teacher to read to the class some descriptions of trees,—Lowell’s “Birch” and “Oak,” “Under the Willows,” and some stanzas from “An Indian Summer Reverie.” Holmes has some good paragraphs on trees in “The Autocrat.” Any good tree descriptions will help pupils to do it better than they can without suggestion. They should describe their own tree, however.

8. Describe some single flower growing wild. Read Lowell’s “Dandelion,” “Violet, Sweet Violet,” Wordsworth’s “Daisy,” “The Daffodils,” “The Small Celandine,” and Burns’s “Daisy.” These do not so much describe as they arouse a feeling of love for the flowers which will show itself in the composition.

9. Describe a view of a lake. If possible, have your point of view above the lake and use the paragraph of comparison.

10. Describe a landscape from a single point of view. Read Curtis’s “My Castles in Spain” from “Prue and I,” many descriptions in “An Inland Voyage” by Stevenson, and “Bay Street” by Bliss Carman in “The Atlantic Monthly.”

11. Describe your first view of a small cluster of houses or a small town.

12. Approach the town, describing its principal features. Keep the reader informed as to where you are.

13. Describe a dog of your own.

14. Describe a dog of your neighbor’s. Before the description is undertaken read “Our Dogs” and “Rab” by Dr. Brown; “A Dog of Flanders” by Ouida. Scott has some noble fellows in his novels.

15. Describe a flock of chickens. There are good descriptions of chickens in “The House of the Seven Gables” and in “Sketches” by Dickens.

16. Describe the burning of your own home. Be careful not to narrate.

17. Describe a stranger you met on the street to-day. It is easier to describe a person if you and the person you describe move toward each other. Remember that you begin the description at a distance. Details should be mentioned as they actually come into view.

18. Describe your father in his favorite corner at home.

19. Describe a person you do not like, by telling what he is not.

20. Describe a person you admire, but are not acquainted with, using the paragraph of comparisons.

21. Describe a picture.

It would be well to have at the end of this year four or five stories written, in which description plays a part. Its principal use is to give the setting to the story, to give concreteness to the characters, and to accent the mood of the story.

Most passages of description are short. Rarely will any pupil write over three hundred words. One hundred are often better. The short composition gives an opportunity for the study of accuracy of expression. What details to include; in what order to arrange them that they produce the best effect, both of vividness and naturalness; and the influence of the point of view and the purpose of the author on the unity of description should be kept constantly present in the exercises. Careful attention should be paid to choice of words, for on right words depends in a large degree the vividness of a description. Right words in well-massed paragraphs of vivid description should be the object this term.

CHAPTER V