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CHAPTER V

DESCRIPTION

35. In description the following are the chief elements: purpose, point of view, characteristic trait, outline, details, order.

The three qualities of style are discussed under each element. The passages for study and exercise work have been grouped under the different elements, but any one element, as purpose or point of view, may be studied in all the passages. Subjects, too, may be interchanged, if it is so desired.

I. Purpose

36. Keep before you the end you wish to attain by your description (purpose). The style, the selection of details, the space allotted to each detail and to some extent the arrangement will differ with different purposes.

Where the purpose is to identify anything or where the object is in itself sufficiently important to the reader, as in legal, scientific and most business descriptions, a clear presentation of the chief parts is required. Where the purpose is to persuade and the advantages or disadvantages are not immediately evident, then the good or evil aspects are dwelt upon, and the description must have force as well as clearness. Speeches, earnest essays, and novels of purpose contain such descriptions. Where the purpose is to entertain as in poetry, in descriptive essays, books of travel (not simple guidebooks), and in most fiction, then novel, humorous or beautiful details are selected, and interest is the chief quality.

EXERCISE 11

1. In Genoa, and thereabouts, they train the vines on trelliswork, supported on square clumsy pillars, which, in themselves, are anything but picturesque. But, here, they twine them around trees, and let them trail among the hedges; and the vineyards are full of trees, regularly planted for this purpose, each with its own vine twining and clustering about it. Their leaves are now of the brightest gold and deepest red; and never was anything so enchantingly graceful and full of beauty. Through miles of these delightful forms and colors, the road winds its way. The wild festoons, the elegant wreaths, and crowns, and garlands of all shapes; the fairy nets flung over heaps and mounds of exquisite shapes upon the ground; how rich and beautiful they are! And every now and then, a long, long line of trees will be all bound and garlanded together, as if they had taken hold of one another, and were coming dancing down the field!

DICKENS: Pictures from Italy.

The writer wishes us to share in his admiration of the picturesque vineyard in Parma, and he wins our attention by novelty ("unlike Genoa") and by beauty in details, which are arranged in order of climax and seem finally to live in the author's enthusiasm.

Describe:

Subjects

The strangest street you ever saw.

The neatness of a series of farms.

The variety on the river-banks seen from a boat.
The grotesqueness of a comic procession.

The grandeur of a great parade.

A walk through a flower garden.

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2. In the calamity which has befallen Matthew Hogan, of whom most of you have heard, every man in court felt a sympathy. With the exception of his having made himself a party in the feuds of his clan, he has always conducted himself with propriety. His landlord felt for him a strong regard, and exerted himself to the utmost in his behalf. He never took part in deeds of nocturnal atrocity honest, industrious, mild, and kindly-natured, he was seconded by the good will of every man who was acquainted with him. His circumstances were not only comparatively 'good, but, when taken in reference to his condition in society, were almost opulent. He rather resembled an English yeoman than an Irish peasant. His appearance at the bar was in a high degree impressive- tall,

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athletic, with a face finely formed, and wholly free from any ferocity of expression, he attracted every eye, and excited even among his prosecutors a feeling of commiseration. He formed a remarkable contrast with the ordinary class of culprits who are arraigned in our public tribunals. So far from having guilt and depravity stamped with want upon his countenance, its prevailing character was indicative of gentleness. This man was convicted of manslaughter; and when he heard the sentence of transportation for life, the color fled from his cheek his lips were dry and ashy his hand shook, and his eye became incapable of tears. The prison of this town will present, on Monday next, a very afflicting spectacle. Before he ascends the vehicle which is to convey him for transportation, he will be allowed to take leave of his wife and children. She will cling to his bosom; and while her arms are folded round his neck while she sobs, in the agony of anguish, on his breast his children who used to climb his knees in playful emulation for his caresses. . . . I will not go on with this distressing picture your own emotions will complete it.

The pains of this poor man will not end at the threshold of his prison. He will be conveyed in a vessel, freighted with affliction, across the ocean, and will be set on the lonely and distant land from which he will depart no more; the thoughts of home will haunt him, and adhere with a deadly tenacity to his heart. He will mope about in a deep and settled sorrow he will have no incentive to exertion, for he will have bidden farewell to hope. The instruments of labor will hang idly in his hands he will go through his task without a consciousness of what he is doing. Thus every day will go by, and at its close, his sad consolation will be to stand on the shore, and fixing his eyes in that direction in which he will have been taught that his country lies, if not in the language, he will, at least, exclaim, in the sentiments which have been so simply and so pathetically expressed in the song of exile:

"Erin, my country, tho' sad and forsaken,

In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore;
But, alas! in far foreign lands I awaken,

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And sigh for the friends that can meet me no more.'
-SHEIL: Speeches.

The purpose of this description is to persuade and is distinctly stated by the speaker: a "melancholy lesson" of the "baneful practice of avenging the affronts offered to individuals by enlisting whole clans." Sympathy for the condemned man will make his listeners "sensible of the extent of the calamity." The contrasted pictures and the concrete details help to deepen the evil aspects of the description. If the purpose was to identify the prisoner, how would he be described? How would this description go in a newspaper?

Describe:

Subjects

Washington for admiration.

Damien for enthusiasm.
Benedict Arnold for horror.

Some drunkard for loathing.

Some successful speaker for emulation.
Some idler for contempt.

3. A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, and thirty its greatest breadth; two elevated rocky barriers, meeting at an angle; three prominent mountains, commanding the plain, -Parnes, Pentelicus, and Hymettus; an unsatisfactory soil; some streams, not always full; — such is about the report which the agent of a London company would have made of Attica. He would report that the climate was mild; the hills were limestone; there was plenty of good marble; more pasture land than at first survey might have been expected, sufficient certainly for sheep and goats; fisheries productive; silver mines once, but long since worked out ; figs fair; oil first-rate; olives in profusion. But what he would not think of noting down, was, that the olive tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape, that it excited a religious veneration; and that it took so kindly to the light soil, as to expand into woods upon the open plain, and to climb up and fringe the hills. He would not think of writing word to his employers, how that clear air, of which I have spoken, brought out, yet blended and subdued, the colors on the marble, till they had a softness and harmony, for all their richness, which in a picture looks exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth. He would not tell, how that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale olive, till the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of the thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees; not take much account of the rare flavor of its honey, since Gozo and Minorca were sufficient for the English demand. He would look over the Aegean from the height he had ascended; he would follow with his eye the chain of islands, which, starting from the Sunian headlands, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, when they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of viaduct thereto across the sea; but this thought would not occur to him, nor any admiration of those graceful, fan-like jets of silver upon the rocks, which slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep, then shiver, and break, and spread, and shroud themselves, and disappear, in a soft mist of foam; nor of the gentle, incessant heaving and panting of the whole liquid plain; nor of the

long waves, keeping steady time, like a line of soldiery, as they resound upon the hollow shore,- he would not deign to notice the restless living element at all, except to bless his stars that he was not upon it. Nor the distinct detail, nor the refined coloring, nor the graceful outline and roseate golden hue of the jutting crags, nor the bold shadows cast from Otus or Laurium by the declining sun; our agent of a mercantile firm would not value these matters even at a low figure. Rather we must turn for the sympathy we seek to yon pilgrim student, come from a semi-barbarous land to that small corner of the earth, as to a shrine, where he might take his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations of invisible unoriginate perfection. It was the stranger from a remote province, from Britain or from Mauritania, to whom a scene so different from that of his chilly, woody swamps, or of his fiery choking sands, would have shown him in a measure what a real University must be, by holding out to him the sort of country which was its suitable home.

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NEWMAN: Site of a University.

The difference of purpose and its effect upon a description is well illustrated in this passage of Newman. In the agent's report, which is practically an inventory, the details carry with them their own importance and call for clear presentation only, but where the attention is to be held and the site of a university is to be persuasively urged on a pilgrim student, beautiful elements and emotional aspects are dwelt upon. The contrast makes both descriptions more effective.

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An autumn scene to a farmer and to a poet.

A sunset at sea for a sailor and for a painter.

A college to a passing traveler and to a graduate.
Home to a visitor and to one of the family.

A toy store to an adult and to a child.

A city from a railroad train and from an automobile.

4. The most remarkable object in Canterbury is the Cathedral, one of the finest ecclesiastical structures in England. The present edifice, 530 feet in length, east to west, and 154 in breadth, has been built in different ages (the oldest part dating from the 11th century) and presents in consequence various styles of architecture (including the Norman and Early English), but retains altogether an imposing appearance. The great tower, 235 feet in height, is one of the most beautiful specimens of the Perpendicular style of Gothic; and the choir is also very fine.

- Encyclopedia Americana.

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