What details are subordinated or subdued to the central thought? Can you think of any details that the author might have included in his description, but has not? That is, what details are suppressed in order to emphasize the central thought? DOVER CLIFF Edgar. Come on, sir; here's the place: stand still. How fearful And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Gloucester. Set me where you stand. Edgar. Give me your hand; you are now within a foot Of the extreme verge: for all beneath the moon Would I not leap upright. - KING LEAR, Act IV, scene vi, lines 11-27. IN THE STEEPLE But high up in the steeple! There the foul blast roars and whistles! High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weather-cock, and make the very tower shake and shiver! High up in the steeple where the belfry is, and iron rails are ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled by the changing weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccustomed tread; and birds stuff shabby nests into corners of old oaken joints and beams; and dust grows old and gray; and speckled spiders, indolent and fat with long security, swing idly to and fro in the vibrations of the bells, and never loose their hold upon their thread-spun castles in the air, or climb up sailor-like in quick alarm, or drop upon the ground and ply a score of nimble legs to save a life! - DICKENS, The Chimes. A THUNDER-STORM Pretty soon it darkened up, and began to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. Directly it began to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale under side of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest—fst! it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels downstairs — where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know. - MARK TWAIN, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A DISMAL DAY IN THE CITY There had been a hesitating fall of snow in the morning, but before noon it had turned to a wild and fitful rain that had finally modified itself into a clinging mist as evening drew near. The heavy snowstorm of the last week in January had left the streets high on both sides with banks that thawed swiftly whenever the sun came out again, the water running from them into the broad gutters, and then freezing hard at night, when the cold wind swept across the city. Now, at nightfall, after a muggy day, a sickening slush had spread itself treacherously over all the crossings. The shop-girls going home had to pick their way cautiously from corner to corner under the iron pillars supporting the station of the elevated railroad. Train followed train overhead, each close on the other's heels; and clouds of steam swirled down as the engines came to a full stop with a shrill grinding of the brakes. From the skeleton spans of the elevated road moisture dripped on the cable-cars below, as they rumbled along with their bells clanging sharply when they neared the crossings. The atmosphere was thick with a damp haze; and there was a halo about every yellow globe in the windows of the bar-rooms at the four corners of the avenue. More frequent, as the dismal day wore to an end, was the hoarse and lugubrious tooting of the ferry-boats in the East River. BRANDER MATTHEWS, Outlines of Local Color. MR. TIGG The gentleman was of that order of appearance which is currently termed shabby-genteel, though in respect of his dress he can hardly be said to have been in any extremities, as his fingers were a long way out of his gloves, and the soles of his feet were at an inconvenient distance from the upper leather of his boots. His nether garments were of a bluish gray-violent in its colors once, but sobered now by age and dinginess — and were so stretched and strained in a tough conflict between his braces and his straps, that they appeared every moment in danger of flying asunder at the knees. His coat, in color blue and of a military cut, was buttoned and frogged up to the chin. His cravat was, in hue and pattern, like one of those mantles which hairdressers are accustomed to wrap about their clients, during the progress of their professional mysteries. His hat had arrived at such a pass that it would have been hard to determine whether it was originally white or black. But he wore a mustache a shaggy mustache too nothing in the meek and merciful way, but quite in the fierce and scornful style - the regular Satanic sort of thing; and he wore, besides, a vast quantity of unbrushed hair. He was very dirty and very jaunty; very bold and very mean; very swaggering and very slinking; very much like a man who might have been something better, and unspeakably like a man who deserved to be something worse. - DICKENS, Martin Chuzzlewit. Exercise 88 1. Find three descriptive selections in this book, not including those printed in Exercise 87, which have a prominent central thought and show a careful selection of details to emphasize that thought. 2. Find a similar descriptive passage in some other book. Bring the book to the class, and be prepared to tell what the central thought of the description is and how the central thought is emphasized. 3. Select some object or scene, a room, a person, a building, a street scene, or a landscape, and make as complete a list as you can of the details you observe. Does this exercise prove that selection of some sort is always necessary in describing an object? Are not the details of even the simplest of objects too numerous and too complex to catalogue completely? 4. Select some object or scene that interests you, and write a description of it. Note first the most salient feature of the thing you wish to describe, or your strongest impression of it, and then select such details as will emphasize that feature or that impression. SECTION 75 Rapid Suggestion Most description, as has been stated, is fragmentary, and much even of what is fragmentary does not go into details. Many an object is so familiar in all its details that the mere mention of the object itself, with a word or two thrown in to suggest its main aspect, is all that is needed to flash an image of it upon the reader's mind. Indeed, the problem ever before you is to produce the true impression with the least number of details. "One long, lurid pencil-stroke along a sky of slate was all that was left of daylight" (CABLE), "The moon was sinking behind the hills, and the lines of trembling monkeys huddled together on the walls and battlements looked like ragged, shaky fringes of things" (KIPLING), and the like, are more vivid than whole pages of the ordinary kind of description. They start the mind to working out the picture for itself, which is the most that description can hope to accomplish. It is worth knowing, then, how to make use of this art of rapid suggestion, how to produce a vivid impression with a few salient details. Here are a few more examples of rapid suggestion: He could just discern the cypresses of the old school garden, like two black lines down the yellow walls. — PATER, Marius the Epicu rean. He rode towards Tibur, under the early sunshine; the marble of its villas glistening all the way before him on the hillside. — Ibid. "A slight figure," said Mr. Peggotty, looking at the fire, “kiender worn; soft, sorrowful, blue eyes; a delicate face; a pritty head, leaning a little down; a quiet voice and way-timid aʼmost. That's Em'ly!" - DICKENS, David Copperfield. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. - DICKENS. An ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman opened the door. She had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy, but her manners were excellent. STEVENSON, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. a One moment had been burnt into his life as its chief epoch moment full of July sunshine and large pink roses shedding their last petals on a grassy court enclosed on three sides by a Gothic cloister. Imagine him in such a scene: a boy of thirteen, stretched prone on the grass where it was in shadow, his curly head propped on his arms over a book, while his tutor, also reading, sat on a camp-stool under shelter. - GEORGE ELIOT, Daniel Deronda. The animal he bestrode was a broken-down plough-horse, that had outlived almost everything but his viciousness. He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with burrs; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral; but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it. — IRVING, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Exercise 89 1. Find, in prose and poetry, other examples of rapid suggestion; copy them and bring them to the class. 2. Describe in a sentence or two, by means of rapid suggestion, the appearance of some person you know. Try to make your description suggest the person's character. 3. Write a brief description of one of the following things, making |