I remember this story from an abnormal psych lit class in high school. It is a difficult thing to eloquently and imaginatively express the pressures of growing-up in a dysfunctional family, especially with such brevity. Lawrence never sounds trivial as he tells us a story suitable for an early twilight zone episode. If he had gone a different route and abandoned the elements of fantasy it would not have been as effective. Lawrence by corrupting a common children’s toy, really shows Paul’s desperation. While the rocking horse visually parallels horse racing. Further, the boy’s illness reminds the reader that gambling is an illness.

The idea of luck is used by the mother as an excuse and by her son as an obsession. Lawrence speaks of an unhappy upbringing in the tone of a children's tale, evoking the perspective of the child, this is more provocative than a solemn mature tone would have been. Another element of innocence and fantasy, is the way in which the house itself whispers of their never having enough money. This theme of greed and insecurity is repeated constantly throughout, providing enough build up to make the boy’s death seem plausible. However, for me the opening paragraph is the most disturbing, when we find out of the mother’s inability to love her children. Sadly, she wants to but she is simply unable to. Her maternal instincts do come out, but unfortunately not soon enough.

The sentences themselves vary from short and clear to long and informative series style sentences.

Grace

Above all this piece speaks of the human desire to do and be better. As the title Grace implies this story depicts a man’s need to be forgiven and repair not only his reputation but also his sense of self-respect. Mr. Keran hits rock bottom amidst strangers. The enablers who helped him reach this point have vanished. However, Mr. Keran’s real friends step in, covertly carrying out an intervention, they try to offer him a chance at redemption through Catholicism. He eventually is persuaded, this attests to the collective appeal of religion. Structurally the story follows the directional flow of the context, ultimately depicting Mr. Keran’s rise back to grace. Joyce touches on the discrepancies between the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. This story shows how much of an impact our friends can have in our lives, for better or worse.

“He wished the details of the incident to remain vague. He wished his friends to think there had been some mistake, that Mr. Harford and he had missed each other. His friends, who knew quite well Mr. Harford’s manner in drinking, were silent.” (p.262)

This passage, like the majority of them, is from the narrator’s perspective. It informs us of Mr. Keran’s embarrassment as well as the empathy his friend’s feel for him. There is repetition present in the first two sentences (he wished… he wished). Mr. Keran’s desire to avoid the details of his incident reveals remorse. This makes him vulnerable to the manipulations of his friend’s. They can convert him because he feels foolish and wants to be redeemed in their eyes.

Four sentence styles:

“The constable, a young man with thick immobile features, listened.” (p. 256)

This sentence has an interrupting modifier. (pattern 11)

“On the mantelpiece of this little office a little leaden battalion of canisters was drawn up and on the table before the window stood four or five china bowls which were usually half full of black liquid.” (p.258)

This sentence uses prepositional phrases. (pattern 14)

“Such a sight!”

This is a short, dramatic sentence. (pattern 19)

“He was quite unconscious that he was the victim of a plot which his friends, Mr. Cunningham, Mr. M’Coy, and Mr. Power had disclosed to Mrs. Keran in the the parlour.”

This sentence has a series of appositives. (pattern 7)

Lolita

“I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.”

The beginning of this passage lists, in series style, numerous contributing factors to the narrator’s happy childhood. Smiling faces is stated last (after the dogs) possibly making it the least apparent aspect in his youth. Everything mentioned is somewhat superficial. Smiling faces are not necessarily equivocal to loving caregivers.

“Around me the splendid Hotel Mirana revolved as a kind of private universe, a whitewashed cosmos within the blue greater one that blazed outside.”

This sentence begins with a prepositional phrase (at least I think it does) similar to pattern 14. Followed by two metaphors acting as appositives. The narrator’s grandiose comparison of the hotel to the cosmos, as well as his declaration of it revolving around him (instead of him being a part of it) effectively distinguishes it as external and inaccessible. This secluded place was his entire world yet, despite its splendor it did not exceed his vision of the world beyond it.

“Ruined Russian princesses who could not pay my father, bought me expensive bonbons.”

This sentence begins with a past participle making it an introductory particle sentence (pattern 12).

“He, mon cher petit papa, took me out boating and biking, taught me to swim and dive and water-ski, read to me Don Quixote and Les Misérables, and I adored and respected him and felt glad for him whenever I overheard the servants discuss his various lady-friends, beautiful and kind beings who made much of me and cooed and shed precious tears over my cheerful motherlessness.”

This sentence begins with an appositive after the subject (pattern 7a). Following this is at least one long series. This sentence is very difficult to analyze. Aside from its complicated and confusing structure, it depicts an active, loving and deeply appreciated father. While, simultaneously portraying a frequently abandoned son. Also present, is the notion that instead of the father maintaining a committed relationship, he carries out numerous affairs. Despite these women’s attempts to fawn over their lover’s son, none of them are in a position to fulfill the role of mother. While the context asserts the boy’s expression of respect and affection, the overall structure conveys something quite different. Due to its lengthy and compounded nature, the sentence implicitly speaks of an isolated boy aware of his father’s frequent absences as well as his lack of a real mother. It is in the combination of ideas (reverence and appreciation, as well as promiscuity and motherlessness) that the real sentiment is asserted. Further, referring to his father as “mon cher petit papa” is somewhat condescending and due to its linguistic divergence it stands as separate. Both of these details contribute to the initial sense that the father is a fairly detached figure.

Overall, reference to the father seems to serve as an explanation for the narrator’s tendencies with women, since that is the main theme within Lolita. Throughout the passage, Nabokov uses structure to convey a contradictory truth to the messages presented by the context.

I had a difficult time discerning which of Sullivan's sentence styles were used in the passage. It is easier to understand them than to identify them.

Clinton's Inauguration

“Today we celebrate the mystery of American renewal.”

With this opening Clinton introduces his focal point. He supports this with the metaphor of spring and the acknowledgement of present day winter. Spring is a recurring image throughout his speech, capable of evoking the idea of renewal and reinvention in a very visual way. From the get go, he actively and consistently works to diminish the distinctions present between his audience, the American people, and himself, as in, “my fellow Americans”. His most blatant and effective rhetorical style is alliteration.

“Deep divisions”

“Sights and sounds of this ceremony…instantaneously”

“end to the era of deadlock and drift”

“resolve to reform”

“Profound & powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world”

This engages the audiences through the aesthetic or poetic elements of his speech. It also actively emphasizes and connects certain ideas together. The structure of his speech is engendered through varying layers of parallelism. One common and simple form of this is homoioptoton, in which he creates patterns of similar word endings, as in:

“Communications and commerce are global, investment is mobile, technology is almost magical, ambition for a better life is now universal.”

This last sentence builds up. Indirectly utilizing the hypotactic structure he implies that the last clause is the result of the first three clauses. Yet it is technically paratactic since it does not directly spell anything out to us it only implicitly reveals a connection.

His writing is accessible while remaining eloquent. His tone sounds sincere and relatable. He articulates every syllable, speaking slowly and clearly. He alters his volume and emphasizes certain words, to create suspense and climax. He seems to end many sentences softly, noticeably arriving at a resolution after a passionate climax. His speech is in the periodic style, thought out and with a clearly defined beginning, middle and end. His reflections upon America’s past also ascribe his speech to the periodic style.

At one point he defines posterity in a specific way. He exploits the audience’s preconceived connotations of the word, rendering it a tool capable of uniting our definition with his and further with several secondary concepts.

He concludes, as he began, with the concept of renewal, leaving the audience feeling a sense of finality.

As far as questions regarding Lanham, I am having a hard time discerning noun vs. verb style sentences, even though this should probably be the easiest of his styles to understand.

Morris, you see, had been a street boy in Liverpool—Woody’s mother and her sister were British by birth. Morris’s Polish family, on their way to America, abandoned him in Liverpool because he had an eye infection and they would all have been sent back from Ellis Island. They stopped awhile in England, but his eyes kept running and they ditched him. They slipped away, and he had to make out alone in Liverpool at the age of twelve. Mother came of better people. Pop, who slept in the cellar of her house, fell in love with her. At sixteen, scabbing during a seamen’s strike, he shovelled his way across the Atlantic and jumped ship in Brooklyn. He became an American, and America never knew it. He voted without papers, he drove without a license, he paid no taxes, he cut every corner. Horses, cards, billiards, and women were his lifelong interests, in ascending order. Did he love anyone (he was so busy)? Yes, he loved Halina. He loved his son. To this day, Mother believed that he had loved her most and always wanted to come back. This gave her a chance to act the queen, with her plump wrists and faded Queen Victoria face. “The girls are instructed never to admit him,” she said. The Empress of India, speaking.

Bellow’s, in several successful ways, endears Morris to the reader. The above paragraph is one instance of this. Bellow’s elicits pity by informing us that Morris was abandoned at the age of twelve by his family. In just a few sentences he is able to justify why Morris is an incompetent father, constantly dependent upon his son for help and money. I think that the power in the opening of this paragraph lies in the fact that it isn’t Morris divulging his own sob story. Throughout the piece, it is Woody who makes forgiving justifications for his father while, actively looking for the good in him. Woody is not as kind in his depiction of his mother, instead he reveals her religious hypocrisy and lack of passion towards life. In this paragraph’s close, Woody briefly references his mother. In doing so, he reinforces the idea that she has played a much more passive role in both her own life and in his, than did his father.

The last few paragraphs of the story are incredibly compelling. The image of Woody holding his shrunken dying father to keep him from ending his life was very moving. This scene in which, Morris manages to die on his own terms really drives home the tenacity, for better or worse, by which Morris lived. In that one image, Bellow’s affirms that this story is, as he declared in its beginning, a reflective memorial piece during mourning.

Morris is more compelling than any of the other characters, including Woody, despite all of his negative attributes or actions. This might be due to the affectionate manner in which Woody regards his deceased father. Also, there is an extremely genuine quality to the piece, due in part to Bellow’s candid style. This made me feel more empathy for the characters and it made the story seem more real. 

9/2/09

Hello,

I'm Asha and this is my first time writing a blog. My favorite authors are Georges Bataille, Murakami and Jorge Luis Borges. I really enjoy Bataille for his ability to be shocking while challenging the reader to consider his controversial ideas in a serious manner. I find Murakami's erratic style appealing, for his ability to keep me interested. Also, his writing is somehow beautiful even when he is expressing or depicting unsettling ideas. Lastly, I really enjoy the beauty of Borges dreamlike writing. If their unique styles were combined, the end result would be shocking yet beautiful and informed yet surreal. I really love writing and hope to improve both stylistically and technically through this course. I would also like to become a more aware reader.