Early Twentieth-Century Fiction
English 358:358, Fall 2023
“Yo’ mama don’t wear no Draws….
To wear dem dirty Draws” (Hurston 157).
Hurston “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” 157.
The last word of the first and last lines of this chant are the same (Draws), which seems to create a cycle. This repetition could mirror the cyclical nature of men entering Janie’s life, yet ultimately failing her. It could also foreshadow Janie’s return to Eatonville at the end of the novel.
“It was Sunday. Our congregation had been visiting at Pulverton, and were coming home. There was no wind. The autumn sun, and bell from Ebenezer Church, listless and heavy” (Toomer 10).
Cane, Jean Toomer, p. 10
Switching between staccato sentences and longer sentences makes the passage seem more raw and real as it mirrors how thoughts form. The shorter sentences create breaks in the flow of the passage to emphasize the importance of smaller details in the setting of the vignette.
“She’s so young and his bringing her here from New York is such a serious- Mightn’t he – mightn’t he do – something to her” (8)
-Hammett, The Maltese Falcon pg 8
Hammett’s use of dashes creates a pause in the scene to make the dialogue feel more real. Compared to commas, dashes create a harsher break in the sentence to emphasize Ms. Wonderly’s fear and uncertainty.
“How many times I told him it’s doing such things as that that makes folks talk about him, I don’t know” ( Faulkner 105).
Faulkner, W., & Faulkner, W. (1990). As I lay dying: The corrected text: Three novels: A summer of Faulkner. Vintage.
Anse answers his own rhetorical question, making himself the most important part of the sentence which highlights his narcissistic and selfish nature. In regards to dignity, he only seems concerned about societies opinion of his children rather than them genuinely respecting his deceased wife.
“a little independence there must be between people living together day in day out in the same house; which Richard gave her, and she him…But with Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into. …And it was intolerable and when it came to that scene in the little garden by the fountain, she had to break with him or they would have been destroyed, both of them ruined, she was convinced; though she had borne about with her for years like an arrow sticking in her heart the grief, the anguish; and then the horror of the movement when some one told her at a concert that he had married a woman met on the boat going to India!” (Woolf 10).
Woolf, Virginia, Mrs. Dalloway (pp. 10) (passage originally selected by tangled_yarn)
I found the considerable amount of semi colons in this passage interesting as they do not divide two complete sentences, but instead connect various pieces of Clarissa Dalloway’s memories. As a result, the audience experiences a version of her memories that is more personal and authentic than a simple retelling of events.
“-I told them all at dinner about it and Father Dolan and I and all of us we had a hearty laugh together over it. Ha! Ha! Ha!” (Joyce 76).
Joyce, J., & Deane, S. (2003). A portrait of the artist as a young man. Penguin Books, pp 76
I find it interesting to see the provincials’ words being spoken by Mr. Dedalus as it seems to separate Stephen from the authority figures in his life. Seeing this moment through Stephens’s point of view emphasizes his isolation as he witnesses the adults around him making light of a painful memory.
“It had taken too much of his life to produce too little of his art”
Henry James, The Middle Years, The Library of America, New York City 1996, pp.338
Why does Dencombe believe there to be a limit on how much time one should spend on their art? His inability to take pride in his work seems to stem from these self-imposed expectations.