Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.
–Helen Keller
Good day! How was your weekend? I spent a part of mine wondering at the journey we all take, that long journey, you know, that leads to a distant country, and that is filled with strange twists and turns, enough to bewilder us at times. Indeed, I thought about a documentary film called Ballet Russe that featured the "stars" of the original company, a small group of individuals now elderly but who in their youth kept alive a ballet tradition that might otherwise have been lost, and who represent the living history of modern classical ballet. They brought the art to small midwestern towns where people had never seen anything like it, introduced it to America and beyond. They didn't know at the time just how new and influential a force they were. Years later they can recount the stories of hard work and excitement and some privation all the training and touring entailed of them, many of them just 12-14 when they began performing. Their knowledge, and their memories, continue to inspire people. They were drawn by the beauty and exhilaration of the dance, their love and passion for it, and for performing. All the while, they were creating a legacy.
In a sense it's what we all do. In ways small or large, our thoughts and actions in response to life create karma, for good or ill, and we live the consequences. Another film I know, called Pan's Labyrinth (2006), directed by Guillermo del Toro, is a beautiful film, a modern fairy tale about a young girl's struggle to make sense of multiple changes and certain threats and dangers. She discovers seemingly magical sources of power that take the form, in part, of fantastic creatures that live in a spooky, labyrinthine netherworld. There she is told she is the heiress to an ancient title, a Princess, in fact, and given certain tasks to "prove" herself fit. She must learn to trust herself throughout, for things are not simply what they seem, and her survival, and that of others, depends upon her knowing what is what, and making the right call.
The twists and turns and dark corners and curves of the labyrinth are a symbol of the human unconscious, a cryptic "force" whose messengers can guide us on our life's path; though we must rightly interpret and wisely use this force, for it can be dangerous. Pan is an ancient nature God, associated with fertility and spring, with shepherds and their flocks, and is often depicted playing a pipe. When we walk, and listen to the wind, feeling it on our skin, and the solid ground under our feet, we may sometimes hear in the wind the sound of his piping.
Stories–narratives–we tell them endlessly. They are built into the fabric of our lives. Our very lives are the stories we tell about them. The meaning we make of existence comes clear in the stories we tell each other, and each is one of the untold gazillions accumulating over time. Each has a point or a purpose. Each involves events, actions, a conflict set in motion, consequences, perhaps the underlying motives and feelings of those involved, the lessons and insights gained through the experiences recounted.
The following paragraphs are shaped as narratives:
A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition–a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of the next–that spared him. And now each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see. At the time, none of them knew anything.
John Hersey, Hiroshima
We imagine the action that took place in the event referenced above, but the writer does not show us the exploding bomb, the fire and smoke and devastation all around. The wails of the living, and the dying.
Narration does more than suggest, it shows action:
When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick–one never does when a shot goes home–but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to go there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly sticken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralyzed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time–it might have been five seconds, I dare say–he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skywards like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.
George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant"
Notice how Orwell works the elements of sight, sound, movement in space, and deep feeling into the account, revealing only at the last line he has been lying down, firing up at the huge animal whose final collapse reverberates in our imagination.
Consider well the opening paragraph, as it should serve to draw the reader in to the story subject. Choose concrete, specific words to relay setting and the emotions at the heart of your piece. The following is the start of a roughly 5000 word biographical essay about the ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, who defected to the West in 1974, and returned at age 50 to pay homage to his roots and dance for all those who had in some way shaped him.
It is raining, and Mikhail Baryshnikov is standing in a courtyard in Riga, the capital of Latvia, pointing up at two corner windows of an old stucco building that was probably yellow once. With him are his companion, Lisa Rhinehart, a former dancer with American Ballet Theatre, and two of his children–Peter, eight, and Aleksandra, or Shura, sixteen. He is showing them the house where he grew up. "It's Soviet communal apartment," he says to the children. "In one apartment, five families. Mother and Father have room at corner. See? Big window. Mother and Father sleep there, we eat there, table there. Then other little room, mostly just two beds, for half brother, Vladimir, and me. In other rooms, other people. For fifteen, sixteen people, one kitchen, one toilet, one bathroom, room with bathtub. But no hot water for bath. On Tuesday and Saturday, Vladimir and I go with Father to public bath."
I open the front door of the building and peer into the dark hallway. Let's go up," I suggest. "No," he says. "I can't." It is more than a quarter century since he was here last.
from "The Soloist," by Joan Acocella
Most of our stories are of events not so unusual; they are of events more homely, domestic, ordinary. These events are no less potentially interesting and dramatic. An important strategy is to narrow your account down to the one or several key events and not to swamp the telling by including too much or anything that does not work to make your dramatic purpose clear, flowing, and forcefully delivered. Dialogue used sparingly may heighten the sense of immediacy and reality. It should reflect real conversation, minus whatever does not move the action forward or reveal character. Simple words and short sentences work best.
Graded exercise (#2) due week 4: Write a 350-500 word narrative essay. Aim here for drama, detail, immediacy and freshness. Include a short introductory paragraph, a well-developed body paragraph or two (or three), and a short concluding paragraph, for a total of about 350 words-500 words. Zero in on details of setting, character, and action, and perhaps includes some dialogue for dramatic effect. Title the essay, double space the lines, indent for each paragraph.
The following is a list of topic suggestions:
*A now-I-know-better experience.
*An experience that shows something of what people are made of, or of what you are made.
*An experience that shows the power of love, anger, desire, fear, etcetera.
*An experience that brought about a significant change in you.
*An experience that reveals the kind of family you have.
*An encounter with a "stranger" you can't now forget.
Sentence Types: last week we looked at the simple and compound sentence types. To review look at the following and identify each as simple or compound:
1. Right here, right now, I would like to smoke a cigarette and take a long walk along the coast.
2. Every day the hot sun glistens on my back.
3. I am living in the moment.
4. On break I ran across the street, and in the process, Jennice called me.
5. Hannah went to the best hospital, and her friends visited her to keep her spirits up.
6. Nothing is worse than being stuck in bed, but attentive friends can make a huge difference in
such situations.
7. The lock was broken and glass lay glinting in the moonlight.
8. Come here, for I want to say something in private.
9. He appeared to listen, but his mind was elsewhere.
10. The stores had all closed, so we window shopped.
A complex sentence has one independent (stand alone) clause (one subject-verb combo) and at least one dependent (can't stand alone except as a fragment) clause. Short examples follow here:
Because he could not be reached by phone, I drove to his house, anxious to see him.
Jimmi walked to work after he crashed his bike.
Unless you give me another chance, we can go no further.
John is a man who loves women more than anything in life.
Bring me the book that you have been hiding.
I cooked and cleaned as the storm raged on.
A compound-complex sentence has at least two independent clauses and at least one dependent clause:
Jimmi hated to be seen as a hypocrite, so he kept his mouth closed while the others freely confessed to backsliding.
If you are to write effectively, your sentences must be clear; words are wasted otherwise.
After the sun dropped below the horizon, and as the moon began her ascent, we set up camp, eager for a chance to relax and eat and talk; each was possessed by the sense of great adventures to come.
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Sentence Exercises for Homework: Do the following comma and fragment exercises at the URLs here posted:
And the following exercise on the distinct uses of the semi-colon and comma:
