Pat Hamer

Period 6

Syntax Style Analysis

Absent

Bluest Eye

Examine the complex attitude in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. This is written from the point of view of Claudia, an African-American child of perhaps 8 or 9 years. Note the various senses to which Morrison appeals. What do you infer her attitude to be toward the subject here? Why? Note how verbs affect tone in the last 8 or 10 lines. Speculate on how this passage might relate to a major theme in the book:

It had begun with Christmas and the gift of dolls. The big, the special, the loving gift was always a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll. From the clucking sounds of adults I knew that the doll represented what they thought was my fondest wish....Picture books were full of little girls sleeping with their dolls. Raggedy Ann dolls usually, but they were out of the question. I was physically revolted and secretly frightened of those round moronic eyes, the pancake face, and orangeworms hair. The other dolls, which were supposed to bring me great pleasure, succeeded in doing just the opposite. When I took it to bed, its hard unyielding limbs resisted my flesh—the tapered fingertips on those dimpled hands scratched. If, in sleep, I turned, the bone-cold head collided with my own. It was a most uncomfortable, patently aggressive sleeping companion. To hold it was no more rewarding. The starched gauze or lace on the cotton dress irritated any embrace. I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me. Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured. "Here," they said, "this is beautiful, and if you are on this day 'worthy' you may have it." I fingered the face, wondering at the single-stroke eyebrows; picked at the pearly teeth stuck like two piano keys between red bowline lips. Traced the turned-up nose, poked the glassy blue eyeballs, twisted the yellow hair. I could not love it. But I could examine it to see what it was that all the world said was lovable. Break off the tiny fingers, bend the flat feet, loosen the hair, twist the head around, and the thing made one sound—a sound they said was the sweet and plaintive cry "Mama," but which sounded to me like the bleat of a dying lamb, or, more precisely, our icebox door opening on rusty hinges in July. Remove the cold and stupid eyeball, it would bleat still, "Ahhhhhh," take off the head, shake out the sawdust, crack the back against the brass bed rail, it would bleat still. The gauze back would slit, and I could see the disk with six holes, the secret of the sound. A mere metal roundness.

Details: Christmas gift of dolls, given Blue-Eyed Baby Doll, hated raggedy Ann dolls, wanted to dismember it, wanted to see what was inside, why everybody loved it, destroyed the doll

These details all point to the tones of curiosity and jealousy. Claudia begins just wandering why the Blue-Eyed Baby Doll was so loved and so beautiful because she found it repulsive and even a little frightening. After Claudia realizes that she will never be able to be like the doll that everybody loved and thought was beautiful she became jealous of this non-living that was more loved than her. At first Claudia just wanted to know what was inside of the doll and why the thing was so loved but the jealousy of a young girl took over and she angrily dismembered it and ripped off its head.

Language: The language of this passage is spoken by a young girl who just received a doll for Christmas. For this reason the grammar is not as if a educated adult was speaking. Since she is so young many of her sentences are very short and choppy as to show the simple stages her mind went through to end up with a dismembered doll.

Sentence Structure: Most of the sentences are short, choppy sentences that were both periodic at times and loose at the others. The short sentences show the simple decisions she made and how she came to her outcome of a destroyed doll, part by part. This is because it is a young girl and not an educated adult. Since the story is short like directions the reader follows the path of what Claudia goes through.

Tone: The two conflicting tones of the Bluest Eye are of curiosity and jealousy. These tones are correct because at first she wonders as to why the doll is so great and then becomes jealous and dismembers the doll.

Jamaica Inn

  It was a cold grey day in late November. The weather had changed overnight, when a backing wind brought a granite sky and a mizzling rain with it, and although it was not only a little after two o'clock in the afternoon the pallor of a winter evening seemed to have closed upon the hills, cloaking them in mist. It would be dark by four. The air was clammy cold, and for all the tightly closed windows it penetrated the interior of the coach. The leather seats felt damp to the hands, and there must have been a small crack in the roof, because now and again little drips of rain fell softly through, smudging the leather and leaving a dark blue stain like a splodge of ink. The wind came in gusts, at times shaking the coach as it travelled round the bend of the road, and in the exposed places on the high ground it blew with such force that the whole body of the coach trembled and swayed, rocking between the high wheels like a drunken man.

     The driver, muffled in a greatcoat to his ears, bent almost double in his seat in a faint endeavour to gain shelter from his own shoulders, while the dispirited horses plodded sullenly to his command, too broken by the wind and the rain to feel the whip that now and again cracked above their heads, while it swung between the 2numb fingaers of the driver.

     The wheels of the coach creaked and groaned as they sank into the ruts on the road, and sometimes they flung up the soft splattered mud against the windows, where it mingled with the constant driving rain, and whatever view there might have been of the countryside was hopelessly obscured.

Daphne DuMaurier From Jamaica Inn. In Four Great Cornish Novels: Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek, My Cousin Rachel.

The syntax of this short passage is very interesting. The majority of the sentences in this short passage are made of choppy and short sentences while the others are long and flowing. The first paragraph follows a pattern of short sentence, long sentence, short, long etc… Most of the sentences are loose sentences but there are some periodic sentences. The long sentences are compound complex sentences while some of the shorter are just compound or just complex. The 1^st and 3^rd sentences start with a pseudo subject, It and are there to just create setting and are highly impersonal. Whereas the 2^nd sentence gives the reader a lot of details and adds to the story and plot. The second paragraph starts with the driver and returns to the bleak hunched over driver. In the last paragraph everything is always being covered by either rain, mud, or mist. The tone of the syntax at the beginning portrays is that of dreariness and bleak. The second paragraph of a tone adds to the theme of bleakness through the driver and horses. The long sentences are as if they themselves are a journey.