Description
Read the short story “Love in L.A.” by Dagoberto Gilb and write a critical analysis of it in the form of a standard, five-paragraph essay. Follow the format provided and use our tools (the Genres, the Eight Steps to Literary Analysis, the Critical Approaches to identify issues and the author’s techniques in presenting them; in your discussion, mention at least two different types of criticism and what the response of each one might be to the story.
Unformatted Attachment Preview
A FEW POINTERS
WRITING ESSAYS
ENG 102
WRITING ESSAYS: A FEW POINTERS
Some of the points I make may seem obvious, but just in case you haven’t
received this specific instruction before (or in case it’s been a long time
since you did) I want to remove all guesswork.
For this class, we will write standard academic-style essays: that means five
paragraphs – the Introduction, three Body Paragraphs (in which you do the
bulk of your discussing, analyzing, arguing, or whatever) and then the
Conclusion.
INTRO
BODY PARAGRAPH 1
BODY PARAGRAPH 2
BODY PARAGRAPH 3
CONCLUSION
GETTING STARTED
The Introductory Paragraph always seems like the hardest part, because you
have to get started. Good news: when you are doing Literary Analysis, it is
easier to begin, because there are very specific jobs you have to do.
First, you should actually introduce the item you will be analyzing – pretend
your reader has no idea what the essay will be about. If you were writing
about “Young Goodman Brown” (you won’t be) you would need to mention
right away the title, the author, the type of work (a short story? a novel? a
poem? a play? a film?) and the date it was published – because that may be
closely related to your analysis. “In 1835, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the
short story ‘Young Goodman Brown” or “’Young Goodman Brown’ is a short
story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1835” – you can word it however
you choose, but that information must be there.
Then you need a quick (three sentences) synopsis of what happens on the
surface of the story –
GETTING STARTED (CONTINUED)
The synopsis has nothing to do with messages between the lines or what the
story might mean – it just orients your reader to the plot in case the reader
isn’t familiar. Later, when you are doing a presentation critiquing material
that possibly the rest of the class hasn’t read, this will be important so that
we can follow your analysis! So:
“Young Goodman Brown”: A young man in colonial Salem leaves his home for
one night to go into the forest. While there he sees members of his community celebrating a satanic mass… when he returns home, nothing has
changed but his new disillusionment and cynicism ruins his life.
“The Swimmer”: An affluent middle-aged man who appears much younger
than he is decides to make his way home from a cocktail party by swimming
in each of the pools along the way. In the process, the pools become less
and less comfortable, his neighbors are less and less welcoming, and time
seems to have sped up. He reaches home an old man, and finds his house
locked and empty, the handles on the door rusted!
GETTING STARTED (CONTINUED)
The synopsis is perhaps the hardest part, but you have to let us know who the
characters are and what happens – on the surface. Then, as you wind up
the three-sentence synopsis, imagine your reader saying, “Okay, uh-huh…so
what?”
Your Thesis Statement is your answer to “so what” – in essence, it tells what
meaning you are going to reveal by discussing the story. Whether you think
Goodman Brown’s disillusionment was foolish or well-founded or symbolic of
helpless cynicism in the 1830’s (when Hawthorne was writing)… make your
approach clear in the Thesis Statement.
At this level, your Thesis Statement doesn’t need to map out what each of the
Body Paragraphs will cover. (Earlier classes may have told you to do that.)
The Thesis Statement just needs to present the basic idea which all three
Body Paragraphs will work to support.
GETTING STARTED
The Thesis Statement should be the last sentence of your Introduction; for
some reason, that position carries its own spotlight, and if you put your
Thesis elsewhere in the Introduction, whatever the last sentence is will
upstage it and make itself sound like the topic of the essay!
Avoid using the first person. To say “It seems to me…” or “I feel that…” in
conversation sounds polite and very civilized – but in print it looks rather
weak. Your writing has a stronger impact if you write what you have to say
as fact: instead of “I really think that the author is using Neddy to show the
gradual decline of alcholism…” just write “The author uses Neddy to show
the gradual decline of alcoholism.”
Remember, different people will focus on different interpretations – decide
what yours is, explain and support it well, and it makes no difference if it
disagrees with someone else’s. You will all be analyzing the same story, but
I will see many different interpretations – the Thesis Statement should show
me right away what your focus will be.
THE BODY OF THE ESSAY
You somehow have to organize what you have to say into three sections, so the
three-paragraph Body format works.
Each paragraph should be a minimum of three sentences long, although that is
minimal – at least five sentences long looks more professional. (NOTE: one
or two-sentence paragraphs are fine in journalism, which is a different and
perfectly valid style of writing… but for this class, academic style is what we
are looking for.)
It is in the Body of the essay that you do most of your explaining, arguing,
proving – whatever the task may be. You are explaining why the interpretation you indicated in your Thesis Statement is valid, and you may be quoting
from the story (or film, or poem, or play) to support your points.
Remember, the point of this course is to formulate and defend your own ideas.
Don’t waste a lot of time looking on line to see what others have written
about the material… very often they are wrong.
THE CONCLUSION
You have already done the work and made your point – the Conclusion just
reminds us of the Thesis and demonstrates that it has been supported.
An irreverent professor I had once summed up academic structure this way:
INTRO:
BODY P 1:
BODY P 2:
BODY P 3:
CONCL.
I’m gonna tell you this –
bla bla bla this
bla bla bla this
bla bla bla this
See, I told you.
You want to show a bit more grace and polish, but that’s the general idea. If
your interpretation is connected with some large general issue – for
instance, if you relate “Young Goodman Brown” to the 1830’s debates over
slavery – you might close with a reference to the consequences of this piece
of literature or the broad public opinion it reflects… but those are just
stylistic tricks. The main point is to wrap up your comments and conclude.
FORMAT
Even though you are uploading the essay into Canvas under your name, make
sure your name appears on the first page as well, in the upper left corner.
Also, give the essay a title – don’t simply call it “First Essay” or “Essay About
[story name]”… create a title that tells something about where you are going
with the subject. It doesn’t have to be wildly creative, but it will look more
professional and impress professors more if it isn’t simply a generic rubberstamp title.
Save and upload your paper as a .pdf document, which works best with Canvas.
Canvas cannot process .pages documents, so make sure you use a .pdf
version of the file. Also, if you are working in Google docs, save an independent copy… usually Google docs won’t allow me to read the material.
AND DEFINITELY DOUBLE-SPACE! With our system, I am marking the papers
directly online and it becomes almost impossible to insert comments or
corrections if your lines aren’t double-spaced.
A FEW GRAMMATICAL POINTS
There are a few common errors that can spoil your essay by distracting from
what you are trying to say. Three of these are particularly sneaky, because
they don’t really exist in conversation… they appear only when we put words
on paper. They are:
1) Sentence Fragment: this means that something is written as though it were
a sentence, but it doesn’t quite qualify. “That music, my ears!” we might say
that, but if we write it (in a college class) it’s wrong – no verb. Does it hurt
your ears, soothe your ears, delight your ears? You have to tell us. We
might say, “All night, sitting by the door!” and it might make perfect sense if
we were talking about a faithful dog waiting for its owner… but on paper, the
sentence needs a subject: tell us the dog sat by the door all night (or the
policeman did, or Barbara did, or whoever – but the sentence needs a subject). Sometimes you might have a perfectly good sentence with both a
subject and a verb and by adding a connecting word (that demands to be
joined to another sentence) you create a fragment. “She walked home.” is
fine. “Although she walked home.” is not… it makes us wait to hear more.
A FEW GRAMMATICAL POINTS (CONTINUED)
2) Run-on sentence: this has the exact opposite problem of a sentence fragment – it’s not only a complete sentence, it’s more than a complete
sentence!
“I hate her she talks too much!” is actually two sentences. It should be
broken between “her” and “she”… you can fix it by inserting a semicolon (;),
or a dash (– ) if you want to be dramatic, or a period (.) or a connecting
word (“I hate her because she talks too much,” “I hate her unless she talks
too much”… whatever you’re trying to say, but you have to realize that two
sentences can’t simply be written as one, but need to be linked properly.
3) A comma splice is exactly the same thing – two sentences pushed together,
but in this case there’s a comma between them. (“I hate her, she talks too
much!”) It’s still wrong. It needs one of the solutions (semicolon, period,
dash, connecting word) mentioned above.
You canNOT fix a run-on sentence by adding a comma and turning it into a
comma splice. You canNOT fix a comma splice by taking the comma out
and turning it into a run-on sentence.
A FEW GRAMMATICAL POINTS (CONTINUED)
Sentence fragment, run-on, comma splice… those are the three errors that
keep cropping up all the way to graduate school, and continue bringing
scores down. Learn to recognize, fix and prevent them. If you have any
uncertainties about them, ask for help! I will be glad to assist.
There is one other annoying error to watch out for: even though I know you
hear this all around you and everyone does it in casual speech, do NOT
use “they” to refer to something singular! The person who lives in the
apartment above you is not “they.” The person who kicked the back of
your seat in the theatre is not “they.” It may slide by in conversation, but it
becomes tremendously distracting and confusing in print. If you don’t
know if you’re dealing with a “he” or a “she,” simply say “he or she,” but
don’t attach “they” when there’s only one! Much of the time you can fix it
by making the referent plural – instead of “Each student must bring their
book,” say “All students must bring their books,” and you’re fine.
Love in L.A. by Dagoberto Gilb
Jake slouched in a clot of near motionless traffic, in the peculiar gray of concrete,
smog, and early morning beneath the overpass of the Hollywood Freeway on Alvarado
Street. He didn’t really mind because he knew how much worse it could be trying to
make a left onto the onramp. He certainly didn’t do that every day of his life, and he’d
assure anyone who’d ask that he never would either. A steady occupation had its
advantages and he couldn’t deny thinking about that too. He needed an FM radio in
something better than this =58 Buick he drove. It would have crushed velvet interior with
electric controls for the L.A. summer, a nice warm heater and defroster for the winter
drives at the beach, a cruise control for those longer trips, mellow speakers front and
rear of course, windows that hum closed, snuffing out that nasty exterior noise of
freeways. The fact was that he’d probably have to change his whole style. Exotic
colognes, plush, dark nightclubs, maitais and daiquiris, necklaced ladies in satin gowns,
misty and sexy like in a tequila ad. Jake could imagaine lots of possibilities when he let
himself, but none that ended up with him pressed onto a stalled freeway.
Jake was thinking about this freedom of his so much that when he glimpsed its
green light he just went ahead and stared bye bye to the steadily employed. When he
turned his head the same direction his windshield faced, it was maybe one second too
late. He pounced the break pedal and steered the front wheels away from the tiny
brakelights but the snack was unavoidable. Just one second sooner and it would only
have been close. Once second more and he’d be crawling up on the Toyota’s trunk. As it
was, it seemed like only a harmless smack, much less solid than the one against his back
bumper.
Jake considered driving past the Toyota but was afraid the traffic ahead would
make it too difficult. As he pulled up against the curb a few carlengths ahead, it occurred
to him that the traffic might have helped him get away too. He slammed the car door
twice to make sure it was closed fully and to give himself another second more, then
toured front and rear of his Buick for damage on or near the bumpers. Not an
impressionable scratch even in the chrome. He perked up. Though the car’s beauty was
secondary to its ability to start and move, the body and paint were clean except for a few
minor dings. This stood out as one of his few clearcut accomplishments over the years.
Before he spoke to the drive of the Toyota, whose looks he could see might present him
with an added complication, he signaled to the driver of the car that hit him, still in his
car and stopped behind the Toyota, and waved his hands and shook his head to let the
man know there was no problem as far as he was concerned. The driver waved back and
started his engine.
AIt didn’t even scratch my paint,@ Jake told her in that way of his. ASo how you
doin? Any damage to the car? I=m kinda hoping so, just so it takes a little more time and
we can talk some. Or else you can give me your phone number now and I won’t have to
lay my regular b.s. on you to get it later.@
1
He took her smile as a good sign and relaxed. HE inhaled her scent like it was
clean air and straightened out his less than new but not unhip clothes.
AYou’ve got Florida plates. You look like you must be Cuban.@
AMy parents are from Venezuela.@
AMy name’s Jake.@ He held out his hand.
AMariana.@
She shook hands like she’d never done it before in her life.
AI really am sorry about hitting you like that.@ He sounded genuine. He fondled
the wide dimple near the cracked taillight. AIt’s amazing how easy it is to put a dent in
these new cars. They’re so soft they might replace waterbeds soon.@ Jake was confused
about how to proceed with this. So much seemed so unlikely, but there was always
possibility. ASo maybe we should go out to breakfast somewhere and talk it over.@
AI don’t eat breakfast.@
ASome coffee then.@
AThanks, but I really can’t.@
AYou’re not married, are you? Not that that would matter much to me. I’m an
openminded kinda guy.@
She was smiling. AI have to get to work.@
AThat sounds boring.@
AI better get your driver’s license,@ she said.
Jake nodded, disappointed. AOne little problem,@ he said. AI didn’t bring it. I just
forgot it this morning. I’m a musician,@ he exaggerated greatly, Aand, well, I dunno, I left
my wallet in the pants I was wearing last night. If you have some paper and a pen I’ll give
you my address and all that.@
He followed her to the glove compartment side of her car.
AWhat if we don’t report it to the insurance companies? I’ll just get it fixed for
you.@ AI don’t think my dad would let me do that.@
AYour dad? It’s not your car?@
AHe bought it for me. And I live at home.@
ARight.@ She was slipping away from him. He went back around to the back of her
new Toyota and looked over the damage again. There was the trunk lid, the bumper, a
rear panel, a taillight.
AYou do have insurance?@ she asked, suspicious, as she came around the back of
the car.
AOh yeah,@ he lied.
AI guess you better write the name of that down too.@
2
He made up a last name and address and wrote down the name of an insurance
company and old girlfriend once belonged to. He considered giving a real phone number
but went against the idea and made one up.
AI act too,@ he lied to enhance the effect more. ABeen in a couple of movies.@ She
smiled like a fan.
ASo how about your phone number?@ He was rebounding maturely. She gave it to
him. AMariana, you are beautiful,@ he said in his most sincere voice.
ACall me,@ she said timidly.
Jake beamed. AWe’ll see you, Mariana,@ he said holding out his hand. Her hand
felt so warm and soft he felt like he’d been kissed.
Back in his car he took a moment or two to feel both proud and sad about his
performance. Then he watched the rear view mirror as Mariana pulled up behind him.
She was writing down the license plate numbers on his Buick, ones that he’d taken off a
junk because the ones that belonged to his had expired so long ago. He turned the
ignition key and revved the big engine and clicked into drive. His sense of freedom
swelled as he drove into the now moving street traffic, though he couldn’t stop the
thought about that FM stereo radio and crushed velvet interior and the new car smell
that would even make it better.
3
02.
EIGHT STEPS TO
LITERARY ANALYSIS
A Tool for Finding Things to Say
About a Work of Literature
If you have to make analytical comments about a reading you really
enjoyed, that’s no problem!
Unfortunately, in college, you don’t always have that situation…
Here is a sort of tool box to help you find things to say about the things you
need to analyze… not every one of these will work with each reading you
have but, in every case, one or another could be very helpful.
8 Steps to Literary Analysis:
1. Protagonist/Antagonist
2. Narration
3. Diction
4. Setting
5. Time
6. Paradigm
7. Historical Context
8. Beginning/Ending
I’ll explain in detail what I mean by each of these –
1. Protagonist/Antagonist
The protagonist is the lead character in the story, and isn’t hard to identify.
Whether it’s a likeable character or not, a good character or not, it’s
simply the main character.
It can sometimes be useful to consider, “What kind of protagonist did the
author create for us?”
If it’s someone who’s very likeable, whose fortunes you immediately care
about – no problem! It’s very easy to feel invested in the story.
…But what if the author has done something less predictable: what if you
have an anti-hero, a protagonist you wouldn’t even want to sit beside on
the bus or share an elevator with, but are forced to follow throughout a
whole story – what is the author up to, doing that?
Perhaps the author is trying to broaden your understanding of how a very
different type of person lives…? Try to come up with some explanation
of why the author has chosen to show you the life, the experiences, the
thoughts, of someone for whom you have very little sympathy.
1. Protagonist/Antagonist (Continued)
The same process can be applied to the antagonist. Sometimes there simply
isn’t one – the protagonist could be struggling simply with a situation…
but very often an author will create a human character who embodies
the forces the protagonist is struggling against.
Again, what kind of antagonist did the author create? An easy villain , that
you know right away is the bad guy?
Or (as with the case of the anti-hero), has the author done something more
challenging… is the antagonist actually quite attractive?
What if you care about and identify with the antagonist more than you do
with the protagonist – and you only gradually realize the antagonist is
doing harm? What is the author doing, setting that up?
Perhaps the author wants to show you how you might look to someone
whose position in life is very different… perhaps the author wants to
alert you to the fact that first impressions can be very misleading…
At any rate, if you are dealing with a nice, likeable antagonist, it definitely
gives you something to analyze and discuss!
2. Narration
How is the story told? Most often, it is done in the style of “he said this…
she answered that, and then they went…” as though some all-seeing
observer were reporting on the characters’ actions.
That is 3rd person narration: it gives the author complete freedom.
But sometimes a story is told in the style of “I told her that, and then I
thought about…” as if it actually happened to the author, a report on a
personal experience.
That is 1st person narration: it’s tremendously powerful, as it creates an
illusion of intimacy. The story “The Red Convertible” was written by a
middle-aged woman who wrote it in the 1st person voice of a teenage
Native boy living on a reservation… we know she isn’t really a teenage
boy, but the 1st person narration creates a bond with the reader, as
though this kid is real and he’s telling us his secrets. Problem: the
author may use this technique to create an immediate connection, but is
then stuck with the one character – cannot tell us what the others are
thinking or experiencing… we only have the narrator’s point of view.
2. Narration (Continued)
There are variations within 3rd person narration.
Omniscient 3rd (omniscient is Latin for “all-knowing”) means the author has
taken complete freedom to move in and out of various characters’
heads, telling us their thoughts and dreams… can change instantly to
another location or another time – complete freedom.
Limited 3rd means the story is told in 3rd person (he said this, she said that)
but you gradually realize it is reflecting just one character’s point of view
– you only see and hear what that one character would. So the author
has chosen 3rd person with none of its freedoms, accepting all the limitations of 1st person, but without its intimacy and immediate bond. That
is interesting! Why would an author do that?
In another class, we read a story by Ernest Hemingway called “Indian
Camp,” which is written in Limited 3rd and I’ll use that as an example —
2. Narration (Continued)
“Indian Camp” was written in the 1920s and seems to be happening in that
era. Very briefly, a doctor from town is riding in a boat going upriver to
an Indian reservation. A Native man is driving the boat. The doctor’s
son (maybe about 8 years old) is with him, and the doctor is explaining
to him that he’s been called to the reservation to help a lady who’s
having trouble having a baby. (You get the feeling that he’s hoping this
may inspire the little boy to become a doctor too when he’s older.)
They arrive at a one-room shack which smells very bad: the woman has
been in labor for 3 days; her husband, who broke his leg in a lumber
camp accident, is in another bed. The doctor announces he will have to
perform a caesarian, and directs some women to start boiling water, to
sterilize all his instruments.
“I don’t have anaesthetic,” the doctor announces, “I’ll need some of the
men to stay here to hold her down while I operate. I don’t have a
scalpel, I will do the surgery with a hunting knife –” so they sterilize the
knife and he goes to work.
2. Narration (Continued)
We learn almost nothing about the procedure – we gradually realize we are
getting the whole story from the little boy’s point of view: he is grossed
out and not paying attention. At one point he asks his father, “Can’t you
make her stop screaming?” and his father says, “We pay no attention to
the screaming –” and the boy notices that just then the woman’s husband turns his face to the wall… but otherwise, no details.
The operation is a success. The baby will be fine, the exhausted woman
goes to sleep. The doctor announces, “I have no sutures, I will have to
close the incision with fishing line…” and they sterilize the fishing line
and he sews her up. The doctor is jubilant. He promises to send a nurse
from town the next day to make sure there’s no infection, but there
won’t be… it was a great success.
“This is going to be in all the medical journals,” he boasts, “imagine – a
caesarian performed in the woods without anaesthetic, using a hunting
knife and fishing line –!”
Just then, they make a shocking discovery.
2. Narration (Continued)
We learn almost nothing about the procedure – we gradually realize we are
getting the whole story from the little boy’s point of view: he is grossed
out and not paying attention. At one point he asks his father, “Can’t you
make her stop screaming?” and his father says, “We pay no attention to
the screaming –” and the boy notices that just then the woman’s husband turns his face to the wall… but otherwise, no details.
The operation is a success. The baby will be fine, the exhausted woman
goes to sleep. The doctor announces, “I have no sutures, I will have to
close the incision with fishing line…” and they sterilize the fishing line
and he sews her up. The doctor is jubilant. He promises to send a nurse
from town the next day to make sure there’s no infection, but there
won’t be… it was a great success.
“This is going to be in all the medical journals,” he boasts, “imagine – a
caesarian performed in the woods without anaesthetic, using a hunting
knife and fishing line –!”
Just then, they make a shocking discovery.
2. Narration (Continued)
The woman’s husband, lying in his bed , with his broken leg, is dead. While
all this was going on, he quietly cut his own throat and bled out.
The doctor is horrified – he hustles his little boy out of there and during the
boat ride back to town, he talks with him a bit about the mysteries of
suicide, but the sun is coming up and the little boy is losing interest…
And that’s that. The story is only two and a half pages long, and the reader
may think, “What was the point of that?” – and then the story explodes
like a time bomb in the reader’s mind. You start to think of things an 8year-old would not consider – what kind of doctor knows he will likely
have to perform a caesarian but does not bring anaesthetic? or a
scalpel? or sutures? The doctor is not incompetent: he took care to
make sure everything was sterile and the surgery was successful… you
remember how excited he was at the splash it would make in medical
journals. You realize he’s using this woman like a lab animal, to perform
a stunt to advance his own career, that he would never do this with a
woman from his own community. You realize that the story has a
subtext of racism, of how Native Americans have been exploited…
2. Narration (Continued)
If Hemingway had told the story in Omniscient 3rd we wouldn’t read it –
who wants the details of a story about surgery without anaesthetic? If
he told it in 1st person with the boy as narrator, it would be distractingly
cute, trying to use the language a child would use.
Instead, he used Limited 3rd from the child’s point of view, eliminating the
details a child would ignore, but trusting our adult minds to put it all
together once we’ve finished.
When you are preparing to analyze a story, realize that the author made
choices and try to think of reasons for those choices. Always think in
terms of the author having a message – looking at the methods the
author has chosen may help you to identify the message.
Many people, faced with an article about racial injustice, would avoid
reading it – figuring they were being preached to. However, they might
read all the way through Hemingway’s story and have their minds
changed by it before they fully realized what it was saying.
2. Narration (one last detail)
There is also such a thing as 2nd person narration – told in the style of “you
said this, you walked across the room thinking that…” as if it is all
reporting on the reader’s experience.
That is odd and tricky, and can too easily seem like a gimmick. If you run
into 2nd person narration, it certainly gives you something interesting to
discuss in your analysis – why would the author choose that?
We had one story in a different collection, called “The Dining Room Table,”
which was about a young woman who is called home from college
because her mother has a brain tumor. The mother has surgery, it seems
successful, but then she relapses and dies. It is a terribly depressing and
unpleasant story and is all told in 2nd person – as though you, the reader,
were the young college student!
I suspect that the writer figured that would compel the reader to keep
reading – you might shrink from hearing someone else’s tragic experience, but when you’re told (even fictionally) that it’s yours, it’s harder to
put the book down!
At any rate – realizing the author chose a particular style of narration and
speculating about why, may give you interesting points to make.
3. Diction
Once you have considered the style of narration, think about the kind of
language used, the choice of words – a good writer has a wide choice of
vocabulary.
Choice of words is called diction and we’ll consider five main types:
1. Standard
2. Refined
3. Archaic
4. Dialect
5. Slang
Standard diction is not difficult to explain: it’s just the way most people
actually talk. It is the most common diction in writing, because it’s easy
for readers to follow.
Refined diction uses longer words, more complex sentences, than people
use in everyday life; in fiction, it is rare unless the author wants to show
that a character is very intelligent, or perhaps very pretentious! You see
it more in textbooks – the author know you have to read those.
3. Diction (Continued)
Archaic diction is old-fashioned, an earlier form of the language, and of
course is more difficult to follow. When we read Romeo and Juliet, it will
use archaic diction because it was written over 400 years ago. That
wasn’t the author’s choice: it was just the way the language was then.
It is more surprising to see something intentionally written in archaic
diction, like “Young Goodman Brown” – when it was written in 1835,
people spoke just about the way we do now; we’d have no trouble
understanding each other. However, author Hawthorne chose to use the
kind of English that was spoken in the 1600’s, not as different as
Shakespeare’s, but still seeming quaint and old-fashioned to us. Why
would an author choose a method that could alienate readers?
My guess is Hawthorne was looking for a kind of mythic authenticity; he
pretended that his stories were actually written in the 1600’s and that he
had found the old manuscripts – everyone knew this wasn’t true, but it
was his effort to make them genuine American legend.
Whenever you find an author intentionally using archaic diction, you
definitely have something to analyze and speculate about!
3. Diction (Continued)
Dialect means the diction reflects the character’s accent. We all pronounce
words according to the way we learned them, where we grew up, and if
an author spells words wrong, to show how they sound when the
character pronounces them, that’s dialect.
You might see it in British literature, used to reveal a character’s social
status, because there are many different accents within the United
Kingdom and they are indicative of class and education.
In American literature, you most often see dialect in efforts to reflect
Southern speech, because Southern American English is distinct from the
standard, having softer “r”’s and broader vowels. A writer might have a
character say, “Ah’m ovah heah –” (for “I’m over here”) to indicate that
the character is from the deep South.
The trouble is, it swiftly becomes annoying or funny, or (if you aren’t familiar with that dialect) impossible to follow. Hearing a character speak with
an accent in a film, you accept it – but seeing it spelled out undermines
the character somehow, giving the impression the character isn’t very
intelligent. So, it’s dangerous: if an author is using dialect, does it work?
Or is it just getting in the reader’s way?
3. Diction (Continued)
Slang: we have the same dialect as our neighborhood, as our family, but
we have the same slang as our generation.
Slang is a re-invention of language, usually quite witty, and each younger
generation devises its own, so that the older generation won’t know
what they’re talking about!
A writer might use slang to give a vivid impression of the time being written
about… the trouble is, slang goes out of fashion. Today, if I wrote a story
with the term “road rage,” you would likely know just what I meant. In
fifty years, a story with that term in it will probably need a footnote.
The 1920’s featured a lot of organized crime… one of the slang terms was a
“gat,” meaning a small gun used in a holdup. That decade produced an
American classic novel about a young man who remade his entire
identity and became a millionaire, but failed in the end because he did it
through crime. In 1926, a reader would look at the glamorous book
cover featuring the name the hero had made up for himself, The Great
Gatsby, and immediately think, “Oh-oh, something’s wrong with this
guy,” seeing “gat” embedded in his name. It’s the author’s little joke, but
today it goes over our heads, because that slang has disappeared.
4. Setting
Setting, of course, is the locale where the story happens. Often
