Bessie Head, author of the short story “The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses” builds her characters through the use of description and diction. Not only does the protagonist, Brille become a clear, almost real image in the reader’s mind, but also the rest of the prisoners, and the antagonist Warder Hannetjie. Head’s skill of description allows the reader to feel as though they may in fact know the characters. She uses slight descriptive words to actually describe the characters but the image builds thanks to the diction she used for the different characters.
Throughout the reading, the character Brille becomes almost an acquaintance through what the reader learns from Head’s diction and description. Brille’s description of what he looks like is simple. There’s not much to his description at all, “. . . a thin little fellow with a hollowed-out chest and comic knobby knees” (Head, 11). Already, an image of this prisoner is formed. Head portrays Brille as being a loyal and honest companion to the others. Prisoners are not supposed to eat cabbage and when the warder sees a cabbage that Brille dropped after eating part of it, he asks who did it and Brille replies, “I did” (Head, 13). Brille owned up to his wrongdoing so that the others would not have to pay for what he had done showing that he is indeed respectful and faithful to his companions. Brille appears to be well educated judging by the diction used in the story. In a letter to his children Brille writes: “Be good comrades, my children. Cooperate, then life will run smoothly” (Head, 14). The vocabulary and pronunciation shown insinuate that Brille is well educated. Brille and his personality are well created because of Bessie Head’s use of description and diction.
Br...
... middle of paper ...
...he reader an image of a group of sly men in a sort of family like group doing as they please, together.
Bessie Head uses diction and description in her short story to build characters. By the end, the reader feels as if they had met Brille, Hannetjie and the rest of the prisoners. Head uses her skills in description to create a picture in the reader’s mind. She goes on with the use of diction to pick out personality traits and relationships between different characters. Throughout the story there is a steady build of the characters in the reader’s mind.
Works Cited
• Head, Bessie “The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses”, Heinemann International, African Writers Series, Copyright 1989
• Modern World Literature, McDougal Littell, Houghton Mifflin Company, Copyright 2001
• wiseGEEK.com, Morrow, Licia “What is an antagonist”, Conjecture Corporation, Copyright 2003-2013
Authors use many different types of imagery in order to better portray their point of view to a reader. This imagery can depict many different things and often enhances the reader’s ability to picture what is occurring in a literary work, and therefore is more able to connect to the writing. An example of imagery used to enhance the quality of a story can be found in Leyvik Yehoash’s poem “Lynching.” In this poem, the imagery that repeatably appears is related to the body of the person who was lynched, and the various ways to describe different parts of his person. The repetition of these description serves as a textual echo, and the variation in description over the course of the poem helps to portray the events that occurred and their importance from the author to the reader. The repeated anatomic imagery and vivid description of various body parts is a textual echo used by Leyvik Yehoash and helps make his poem more powerful and effective for the reader and expand on its message about the hardship for African Americans living
Henry's first-person narrative is the most important element of these stories. Through it he recounts the events of his life, his experiences with others, his accomplishments and troubles. The great achievement of this narrative voice is how effortlessly it reveals Henry's limited education while simultaneously demonstrating his quick intelligence, all in an entertaining and convincing fashion. Henry introduces himself by introducing his home-town of Perkinsville, New York, whereupon his woeful g...
“ The horizon was the color of milk. Cold and fresh. Poured out among the bodies” (Zusak 175). The device is used in the evidence of the quote by using descriptives words that create a mental image. The text gives the reader that opportunity to use their senses when reading the story. “Somehow, between the sadness and loss, Max Vandenburg, who was now a teenager with hard hands, blackened eyes, and a sore tooth, was also a little disappointed” (Zusak 188). This quote demonstrates how the author uses descriptive words to create a mental image which gives the text more of an appeal to the reader's sense such as vision. “She could see his face now, in the tired light. His mouth was open and his skin was the color of eggshells. Whisker coated his jaw and chin, and his ears were hard and flat. He had a small but misshapen nose” (Zusak 201). The quotes allows the reader to visualize what the characters facial features looked like through the use of descriptive words. Imagery helps bring the story to life and to make the text more exciting. The reader's senses can be used to determine the observations that the author is making about its characters. The literary device changes the text by letting the reader interact with the text by using their observation skills. The author is using imagery by creating images that engages the reader to know exactly what's going on in the story which allows them to
The author, Melina Marchetta applies a variety of familiar and stereotypical events in the book. From cases such as the different characters, their characteristics and their reaction upon certain events that occur in the book. One great example of a stereotypical event in this book is the relationship between Josephine Alibrandi and Jacob Coote who is the school captain of a public school called Cook High. “He cracked two eggs on my glasses once” (32).
Piper’s use of imagery in this way gives the opportunity for the reader to experience “first hand” the power of words, and inspires the reader to be free from the fear of writing.
As we can gather from the examples, Gwen Harwood uses language to create dynamic backgrounds and images to subtly delineate the changes experienced by the persona in the poems. Sometimes the characters themselves are not aware of these changes but the readers are able to appreciate them with the aid of skill Harwood posses in using language to such great measures.
One of the key components of literature is the usage of elements, these elements of literature provide readers with underlying themes that authors put into their story. Without these elements of literature, the author would have no way to convey their true messages into their works. In Zora Neale Hurston’s story “Sweat”, Hurston uses many elements of literature to convey the seriousness and true relationship of couples that have a history of domestic violence. However, a specific element of literature that Hurston uses are symbols which give readers a clearer understanding of domestic abuse and most importantly, the characteristics of the victim and perpetrator of an abusive relationship. The symbols that Hurston uses in her story are what fortifies her plot and characters in “Sweat”.
Living during the early nineteen hundreds was not easy for African American women. Women gained power through marriage, but they still were looked down upon and treated like slaves. In the story “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston uses diction, symbolism, and foreshadowing to reveal how Janie sought to discover her own identity marrying three different men who helped her discover her independence leading to the fact that women were poorly treated during this time period and deserved more respect than they received.
Coming of age is essential to the theme of many major novels in the literary world. A characters journey through any route to self-discovery outlines a part of the readers own emotional perception of their own self-awareness. This represents a bridge between the book itself and the reader for the stimulating connection amongst the two. It is seen throughout Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong, Hang’s coming of age represents her development as a woman, her changing process of thinking, and her ability to connect to the reader on a personal level.
Carver progresses the narrator’s tone throughout the story, from disdainful to cautious to introspective by developing his relationship with Robert, and forcing them to interact with each other, to express that false presumptions about strangers, based on someone else’s experience or stories, can be misleading.
Miss Brill is advanced in years. She has been coming weekly to the gardens for “‘a long time’” (100). Furthermore, the two young lovers describe her as an “‘an old thing”’ (100).
perceive the novel in the rational of an eleven-year-old girl. One short, simple sentence is followed by another , relating each in an easy flow of thoughts. Gibbons allows this stream of thoughts to again emphasize the childish perception of life’s greatest tragedies. For example, Gibbons uses the simple diction and stream of consciousness as Ellen searches herself for the true person she is. Gibbons uses this to show the reader how Ellen is an average girl who enjoys all of the things normal children relish and to contrast the naive lucidity of the sentences to the depth of the conceptions which Ellen has such a simplistic way of explaining.
After reading Sonny’s Blues and Cathedral by James Baldwin and Raymond Carver respectively, it is easy to distinguish similarities and differences when comparing them to the other stories previously read. We discussed in class the structures, settings, forms and themes of these stories, in which we often found imprisonment was a recurring topic. On the contrary, the two stories assigned for Thursday differ from the others in some aspects like the narrator, style and some themes.
Characterization has been established as an important part of literature as it allows authors to fully develop characters’ personalities, allowing readers to understand the characters and their actions. In the poem Judith, the author uses adjective phrases to describe Judith and Holofernes’ personalities. The diverse contrast in their nature highlights the heroic qualities in Judith, which teach the reader to have faith in God, as that is where her courage and strength stems from. Therefore, characterization can further be used as a technique to establish major themes in a work of
Unlike Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Rhys chooses to portray the character of Bertha as Antoinette Cosway, a living, thinking human being. And then, she chooses to write a back story for Mr. Rochester to show what his inner self looks like and how it affects Antoinette and finally, she ends with Grace Poole’s account and a final word from Antoinette herself. In having three different narrators, Rhys has created a setting where everything and everyone is carefully scrutinized. Every action is carefully accounted for in Rhys’ novel, unlike its nineteenth century predecessor, where the story is told from only one perspective. Through the three characters who narrate Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys criticizes Bronte’s choice of narration in Jane Eyre and therefore, humanizes Bertha into more than a beast-like thing.