The Elements of Style

The point of close reading is to go beyond merely summarizing a work to figuring out how a writer’s stylistic choices convey the work’s message or meaning. Once you begin to analyze literature closely, you will see how all of the parts of a piece of literature work together, from the structure of the piece down to individual word choices. The following is a brief introduction to the essential elements of style. Understanding these terms and concepts will give you things to be on the lookout for as you close-read, as well as vocabulary to help you describe what you see. Examples for all of these concepts, and more, are available in the glossary at the back of the book.

 

Diction

Authors choose their words carefully to convey precise meanings. We call these word choices the author’s diction. A word can have more than one dictionary definition, or denotation, so when you analyze diction, you must consider all of a word’s possible meanings. If the words have meanings or associations beyond the dictionary definitions, their connotations, you should ask how those relate to the meaning of the piece. Sometimes a word’s connotations will reveal another layer of meaning; sometimes they will affect the tone, as in the case of formal or informal diction, which is sometimes called slang, or colloquial, language. Diction can also be abstract or concrete. Let’s look at an example of diction from the third stanza of Housman’s poem:

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

In the third line, Housman plays with the multiple denotations of the word laurel, which is both a small evergreen tree, and an honor or accolade. Housman is using these multiple denotations to establish a paradox. Though the laurel that represents fame is evergreen, fame itself is fleeting, even more fleeting than the rosy bloom of youth.

 

Figurative Language

Language that is not literal is called figurative, as in a figure of speech. Sometimes this kind of language is called metaphorical because it explains or expands on an idea by comparing it to something else. The comparison can be explicit, as in the case of a simile, which makes a comparison using like or as; or it can be an implied comparison, as in the case of a metaphor. Personification is a figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human characteristics. An analogy is a figure of speech that usually helps explain something unfamiliar or complicated by comparing it to something familiar or simple.

When a metaphor is extended over several lines in a work, it’s called an extended metaphor. Other forms of figurative language include overstatement (or hyperbole), understatement, paradox (a statement that seems contradictory but actually reveals a surprising truth), and irony. There are a few different types of irony, but verbal irony is the most common. It occurs when a speaker says one thing but really means something else, or when there is a noticeable incongruity between what is expected and what is said.

 

Imagery

Imagery is the verbal expression of a sensory experience and can appeal to any of the five senses. Sometimes imagery depends on very concrete language — that is, descriptions of how things look, feel, sound, smell, or taste. In considering imagery, look carefully at how the sense impressions are created. Also pay attention to patterns of images that are repeated throughout a work. Often writers use figurative language to make their descriptions even more vivid. Look at this description from the Cather passage:

Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons (groups) around me. Their backs were polished vermilion (red) , with black spots.

The imagery tells us that these are little red bugs with black spots, but consider what is added with the words “squadrons” and “vermilion,” both figurative descriptions.

 

Syntax

Syntax is the arrangement of words into phrases, clauses, and sentences. When we read closely, we consider whether the sentences in a work are long or short, simple or complex. The sentence might also be cumulative, beginning with an independent clause and followed by subordinate clauses or phrases that add detail; or periodic, beginning with subordinate clauses or phrases that build toward the main clause. The word order can be the traditional subject-verb-object order or inverted (e.g., verbsubject- object or object-subject-verb). You might also look at syntactic patterns, such as several long sentences followed by a short sentence. Housman uses inversion in several places, perhaps to ensure the rhyme scheme but also to emphasize a point. When he writes, “And home we brought you shoulder-high” (l. 4), the shift in expected word order (“We brought you home”) emphasizes “home,” which is further emphasized by being repeated two lines later.

 

Tone and Mood

Tone reflects the speaker’s attitude toward the subject of the work. Mood is the feeling

the reader experiences as a result of the tone. Tone and mood provide the emotional

coloring of a work and are created by the writer’s stylistic choices. When you describe

the tone and mood of a work, try to use at least two precise words, rather than words

that are vague and general, such as happy, sad, or different. In describing the tone of the

Cather passage, you might say that it is contented and joyful. What is most important

is that you consider the style elements that went into creating the tone.

Now that you have some familiarity with the elements of style, you can use

them as a starting point for close reading. Here are some questions you can ask of

any text:

Diction

• Which of the important words (verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs) in the

poem or passage are general and abstract, and which are specific and concrete?

• Are the important words formal, informal, colloquial, or slang?

• Are there words with strong connotations, words we might refer to as “loaded”?

Figurative Language

• Are some words not literal but figurative, creating figures of speech such as

metaphors, similes, and personification?

Imagery

• Are the images — the parts of the passage we experience with our five senses —

concrete, or do they depend on figurative language to come alive?

Syntax

• What is the order of the words in the sentences? Are they in the usual subjectverb-

object order, or are they inverted?

• Which is more prevalent in the passage, nouns or verbs?

• What are the sentences like? Do their meanings build periodically or cumulatively?

• How do the sentences connect their words, phrases, and clauses?

• How is the poem or passage organized? Is it chronological? Does it move from

concrete to abstract or vice versa? Or does it follow some other pattern?

 

ACTIVITY •

Reread Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young”, and use it to answer the preceding questions on style.

 

A Sample Close Analysis

Let’s look at a passage from Eudora Welty’s short story “Old Mr. Marblehall.”

There is Mr. Marblehall’s ancestral home. It’s not so wonderfully large — it has only four columns — but you always look toward it, the way you always glance into tunnels and see nothing. The river is after it now, and the little back garden has assuredly crumbled away, but the box maze is there on the edge like a trap, to confound the Mississippi River. Deep in the red wall waits the front door — it weighs such a lot, it is perfectly solid, all one piece, black mahogany. . . . And you see — one of them is always going in it. There is a knocker shaped like a gasping fish on the door. You have every reason in the world to imagine the inside is dark, with old things about. There’s many a big, deathly-looking tapestry, wrinkling and thin, many a sofa shaped like an S. Brocades as tall as the wicked queens in Italian tales stand gathered before the windows. Everything is draped and hooded and shaded, of course, unaffectionate but close. Such rosy lamps! The only sound would be a breath against the prisms, a stirring of the chandelier. It’s like old eyelids, the house with one of its shutters, in careful working order, slowly opening outward.

[1937]

 

The passage begins with an incongruity: the house is an “ancestral home,” yet “it’s

not so wonderfully large.” This sets up a discrepancy between what we might expect

and what the speaker describes. The concrete details in the passage — columns, box

maze, front door, knocker, tapestry, sofa, brocades, lamps — suggest formality and

elegance, yet adjectives such as “wrinkling and thin,” “draped,” “hooded,” and “shaded”

create images of decay, deception, even death. The S-shaped sofas are so snake-like that

they practically hiss. The speaker’s description creates a sense of decay and menace,

from this house that does not live up to the grand description of “ancestral home.”

 

Figurative language emphasizes these incongruities. The speaker uses a simile (in

this simile, “like” is implied rather than explicit) to describe the way observers look at

the house without actually seeing anything, “the way you always glance into tunnels and

see nothing.” The box maze is not fun or beautiful but “like a trap,” a door knocker is

not welcoming but “shaped like a gasping fish,” brocades are not elegant but “tall as the

wicked queens in Italian tales.” Personification deepens this sense of mystery. The river

“is after it now,” as if in pursuit of the house. The front door “waits,” prepared to swallow

up any visitors. The furniture is “draped and hooded and shaded,” calling to mind

both ghosts and executioners. The final simile personifies the house as being “like old

eyelids.” This image literally refers to the shutters opening slowly but also emphasizes age

and decrepitude while suggesting that this house is alive, and watching you. In fact, all of

these figures of speech suggest that something sinister is afoot.

 

Apart from the one short sentence fragment — “Such rosy lamps!” — the sentences

are fairly long and build through accumulation of detail. Most are in normal

word order with clauses and phrases added one after another to characterize

the house and add description and qualification. One exception is an example of

inverted syntax — “Deep in the red wall waits the front door” — a phrase that underscores

the menace of the entranceway. These sentences acquaint the reader with the

house — and suggest something about the character of its owner, Mr. Marblehall.

Through the eye of the speaker, we become wary of this place and its occupant.

 

• ACTIVITY •

Below is the conclusion to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. At

the end of the novel, its narrator, Nick Carraway, remembers Jay Gatsby as a

person with a great “capacity for wonder.” Read the passage carefully. Then

analyze how the style conveys this sense of Gatsby.

 

From The Great Gatsby

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights

except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the

moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually

I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that

had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last

and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man

must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an

aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the

last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of

Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s

dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have

seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it

was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the

city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year

recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will

run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning ——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the

past.

[1925]