Prose: Character, Scene, Style

This is Unit Eleven of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part two of two. Part one left Gradgrind at his neckcloth, unnamed and built from right angles. This part finishes him, turns to Austen, and gives the style terms and the traps. Part one's governing idea was that characterisation is read off the selection of detail, a style question in a character question's clothes. This part pays it off by taking stock: everything known about Gradgrind after two chapters came from adjective choice, sentence repetition and a family of metaphors, and no trait was ever asserted. First the vessels, the image that is the chapter's thesis, and whose image it is; then the second chapter, where the name arrives after the portrait, and the one axis the pages can answer. Then the exam's four likely questions and the tone. Then Austen, who characterises by dialogue and by choosing whom to quote, with scene, summary and setting as argument. Then three style terms the glossary omits, clause-counting, and four traps. Last, a four-step procedure, the sixth statement of one rule, and the anchor's record at five defects, the last the one most likely to change an answer. By the end you will be able to finish Gradgrind on one axis. To name the exam's questions and the tone. To read Austen's dialogue and Dickens's vault. To use three style terms and defeat four traps. And to run the procedure and state the record.

Six entries that finish Dickens: the little vessels, whose metaphor they are, a man of realities, nothing over said twice, the rule and scales and table, and whether Gradgrind is flat or round.

The children are containers.

AIL 1026 The Little Vessels

The chapter ends with the adults sweeping their eyes over the inclined plane of little vessels arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until full to the brim. The children are containers, and the metaphor is the chapter's thesis, stated in an image rather than a sentence.

Narrator's words, speaker's vision.

AIL 1027 Whose Metaphor Are the Vessels

The narrator supplies the image, but it describes how the speaker sees the room. Unit ten's attribution question applies: the vocabulary is the narrator's and the way of seeing is the speaker's, which makes this free indirect discourse doing characterisation, and unit ten's attribution test applies here in full.

The name arrives after the portrait.

AIL 1028 "A Man of Realities"

Chapter two opens naming him: Thomas Gradgrind, a man of realities, a man of facts and calculations, a man who proceeds on the principle that two and two are four and nothing over. Anaphora again, three times on a man of, and the name arrives after the portrait is complete.

Nothing over, said twice.

AIL 1029 "And Nothing Over"

The phrase nothing over appears twice in two clauses: two and two are four and nothing over, and he is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. The repetition makes the refusal a settled habit rather than a single position, and repetition marks a habit in prose as in verse.

Human nature, as a parcel.

AIL 1030 Rule, Scales, Multiplication Table

He carries a rule, a pair of scales and the multiplication table in his pocket, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature and tell you exactly what it comes to. Parcel is the word that indicts him: people arrive as goods, and one noun does the indicting.

Flat here; static is unknown.

AIL 1031 Is Gradgrind Flat or Round

On the evidence of these two chapters he is flat: one trait, fully accounting for him, with no interior shown. Whether he is static is a separate question these pages cannot answer, and keeping the two apart is exactly what part one's two axes were for; the passage answers one axis only.

Three entries on the exam and the evidence: four likely questions, all about style; the tone of the description; and the method stated, that nothing about Gradgrind was asserted.

Four questions, all about style.

AIL 1032 What the Exam Would Ask of This Passage

Likely items: what the vessels metaphor suggests, what the repetition of square achieves, whose view the vessels image represents, and what tone the description takes. Four questions, and every one is answered from the style rather than from the plot; the plot is not the evidence here.

Comic manner, severe judgment.

AIL 1033 The Tone of the Description

The manner is comic and the judgment is severe, which unit four's lexicon would pair as something like satirical but restrained. The glossary's Horatian and Juvenalian distinction is useful: Dickens enjoys the performance, which puts him nearer the gentler end, nearer Horatian than Juvenalian.

Adjectives, repetition, metaphor family.

AIL 1034 Style as the Evidence for Character

Everything known about Gradgrind after two chapters came from adjective choice, sentence repetition, and the family of metaphors used on him. No trait was asserted. That is the method this unit exists to teach, and it works on any prose passage the exam prints; here the governing idea pays off.

Five entries on Austen and on scene: characterisation by dialogue, a husband reported rather than quoted, the technique named, scene against summary, and Dickens's schoolroom as a vault.

Two lines establish a marriage.

AIL 1035 Austen Characterises by Dialogue

Where Dickens builds a man from description, Austen lets people speak. The Bennets' first exchange gives her opening a marriage rumour and gives him a flat refusal to be interested. Two lines of dialogue establish a marriage, which is a different technique for the same end: description against dialogue.

She is quoted; he is reported.

AIL 1036 "Mr. Bennet Replied That He Had Not"

His wife's speech is given in her own words and his answer is reported rather than quoted. The narrator declines to let him speak directly, which enacts his unwillingness to engage. The choice between quoting and reporting is itself characterisation, and quoting or reporting is always a choice.

Own words, or the narrator's summary.

AIL 1037 Quoted Against Reported Speech

Direct speech gives a character's own words and rhythm; reported speech passes them through the narrator and shortens them. The glossary defines neither. Noticing which a passage uses for which character shows where the narrative sympathy and attention are going; sympathy follows the quoting.

Where it slows, it matters.

AIL 1038 Scene and Summary

A scene renders events at something like their own pace, with dialogue and detail; summary covers time quickly. The glossary defines neither. Where a passage slows into scene is where the writer wants attention, and that is a mechanical clue to significance; pace marks significance.

A vault, plain, bare, monotonous.

AIL 1039 Setting as Argument

Dickens gives the schoolroom as a plain, bare, monotonous vault. Three adjectives and a noun that belongs to a tomb. Setting is rarely neutral in prose that has a case to make, and its adjectives can usually be read as a comment on the people inside it; the room comments on the man.

Six entries on style terms and traps: diction, syntax and register supplied, sentence length counted, and then answering from plot, the sympathetic character, the anchor's flat and static, and the isolated detail.

Word choice, sentence shape, formality.

AIL 1040 Diction, Syntax, Register

Three terms describe a style: diction is word choice, syntax is sentence construction, register is the level of formality. The glossary defines none of them. A style question is answered by naming which of the three is doing the work in the quoted lines; all three are absent from the glossary.

Short commands, one vast sentence.

AIL 1041 Sentence Length

Dickens's speech is a run of short flat commands; his description is one enormous accumulating sentence. The contrast is deliberate, and a question about style may point at either. Count clauses before describing a style, because impressions of pace are unreliable; count clauses, do not estimate.

The passage is the evidence.

AIL 1042 Trap: Answering From Plot

A character question may be answered from what a person does elsewhere in a book the candidate has read. The passage is the evidence, and a trait not shown in it cannot be the answer however true it is of the novel; outside knowledge is not admissible here.

Attention is not endorsement.

AIL 1043 Trap: The Sympathetic Character

Readers assume the character given most space is the one to side with. Dickens gives Gradgrind the whole opening and condemns him throughout it. Attention is not endorsement, which is unit five's warning about Browning's Duke in prose form, the same warning as unit five's.

Answer the complexity axis.

AIL 1044 Trap: The Anchor's Flat and Static

If an option treats flat and static as interchangeable, it is reproducing the anchor's error rather than testing your reading. Use the two axes properly, and if the question forces the pairing, answer the complexity axis, which is what flat and round actually name; do not reproduce the pairing.

Patterns beat single images.

AIL 1045 Trap: The Isolated Detail

One metaphor proves little; a family of them proves a great deal. Gradgrind's case rests on cellarage, plantation and warehouse agreeing with each other. An option resting on a single image is weaker than one resting on a pattern, and the exam builds distractors from single images.

Five entries to close: a four-step procedure for a character passage, what style does not settle, what to carry forward, the anchor's record at five defects, and the handoff to rhetoric.

Adjectives, repetitions, metaphor family.

AIL 1046 A Procedure for a Character Passage

List the adjectives applied to the person. Note any repeated word or sentence opening. Identify the family the metaphors belong to. Then state the trait those three point at. Four steps, and the trait is arrived at rather than guessed; arrive at the trait, do not guess it.

The device must be read, not named.

AIL 1047 What Style Does Not Settle

Naming a device does not establish what a character is like; the device has to be read for what it transfers. Units six to ten each made this point about their own material. This is the sixth and last statement of it in the craft units, the sixth statement of one rule.

Two axes, four steps, three terms.

AIL 1048 What to Carry Forward

Carry the two character axes kept separate, the four-step procedure, the three style terms, and the rule that a pattern of images beats a single one. Those four handle the character and style family without depending on any novel having been read; no novel needs to have been read.

Five defects, one consequential.

AIL 1049 The Anchor's Record Updated

Five defects now stand recorded: irony defined twice, iambic diameter, anapestic misspelled and undefined, a personification example not found in the poet credited, and the character axes collapsed. The last is the most consequential, because it would produce a wrong answer rather than a missing term.

Next: rhetoric and the essay.

AIL 1050 What the Next Unit Does

Fiction is done. The next unit takes nonfiction: rhetoric, the essay, and the rhetorical modes the anchor devotes eight chapters to. Swift and Equiano are the worked texts, and anaphora returns there as a rhetorical device rather than a descriptive one; anaphora returns with a new job.

That is Gradgrind finished, the exam's questions, Austen's dialogue, the style terms, the traps, and the record, with the governing idea paid off in the method stated. You can read the vessels as the chapter's thesis and give the image to the speaker's vision in the narrator's words, follow a man of realities and nothing over twice and the parcel of human nature, and say the pages prove Gradgrind flat while leaving static open. You can name four likely questions, all about style, and place the tone as comic in manner, severe in judgment, nearer Horatian. You can read Austen's two lines of dialogue, see that she is quoted and he is reported, tell scene from summary by pace, and read a vault as a comment on the man in it. You can name diction, syntax and register, count clauses, and refuse plot, sympathy, the anchor's pairing, and the isolated detail. And you can run adjectives, repetitions, metaphor family, trait, keep naming apart from reading, carry four things, and state five defects, the last the one that changes answers. Unit twelve takes rhetoric.