English IOP Practice
Transcript of English IOP Practice
How is the writing in some ways more like poetry than narrative prose in “The Road”?
Natsuki Yoshioka
Introduction
Here are some of the few techniques that will be discussed to explain the general statement:
Unique Grammar
Long, complex sentences
Imagery, similes, metaphors
What exactly is the difference?
Narrative emphasizes on plot
Spoken/Written account of connected events; a story
No pattern, just sentences and paragraphs
Poetry emphasizes on mood and feeling of text
Shown by the use of distinctive style and rhythm
Follows a set of pattern in an artistic manner
What exactly is the difference?
Aid #1: The first 2 stanzas of
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down on as far as I could
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
Had worn them really about the same
Use of Unique Grammar
Few punctuations: Few commas, no semi-colons
Not many grammatical structures
Example 1, Aid #2 “When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold
of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each other than what had gone before.” (Pg. 3 from “The Road”)
No punctuations: Few commas, no semi-colons and almost no full stops
Not many grammatical structures
Example 1, Aid #2 “When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold
of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each other than what had gone before.” (Pg. 3 from “The Road”)
Use of Unique Grammar
Use of Unique Grammar
Example #2:
Not necessary with incorrect grammar
Many ‘and’s Creates lengthy sentences
Long-drawn-outExhausting to read: Reflecting how the father feels too
Use of Unique Grammar
Purpose 1: Maximizes Setting/Plot/Characterization
With a lack in these components, author creates a bareness, desolate landscape which fits the setting of the story itselfBy employing these, McCarthy makes it easier to communicate the abandoned landscape that is separate from the context
Use of Unique GrammarPurpose 2: To make the writing straightforward to avoid
ambiguities
From Interview, Oprah:
"You shouldn't block the page up with weird little marks. If you write properly, you shouldn't have to punctuate.”
"You really have to be aware that there are no quotation marks to guide people, and write in such a way that it won't be confusing as to who is speaking.”
"You're just here once, life is brief, and to have to spend every day of it doing what somebody else wants you to do is not the way to live it.”
Simplicity
Use of Unique Grammar
Able to express the love between the two main characters: The boy and Father
Concise vocabulary, undecorated style; however, giving an undying tenderness of the two charactersThe tenderness between the father and son is an example of showing rather than telling
Long, Complex Sentences
Biblical intensity of landscape
Links with metaphorical conjunctions
Can connect to the feelings of a characterRefer to first example; Aid #2
Long, Complex Sentences
Aid #4:Passage taken from “The Road”
“The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holds in the drifted ashes that closed behind them silently as eyes. Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and as unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond.”
Figurative Language
Includes metaphors, similes, and all kinds of imagery
Interprets a waste land
Images of trout
Images are dynamic representations of motifs throughout the book
Example from “The Road”, Aid #5“He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old Chronicle. To see out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return. Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must” (P. 15)
Figurative Language
Figurative Language
Example from “The Road”, Aid #5“He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old Chronicle. To see out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return. Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must” (P. 15)
Conclusion
How is the writing more Poetry than Narrative Prose?
Unique Grammar
Long, complex sentences
Imagery, similes, metaphors
McCarthy’s writing style is artisticPoetry=Artistic
McCarthy’s writing style=Poetic