Читать книгу Composition-Rhetoric - Stratton D. Brooks - Страница 18

1. Report orally some interesting incident taken from a book which you have recently read. Do not reread the story. Use such language as will cause the class to form clear mental images.

2. Report orally upon some chapter selected from Cooper's Last of the Mohicans or Scott's Ivanhoe.

3. Read a portion of Scott's Lady of the Lake, and report orally what happened.

4. Report orally some incident that you have read about in a magazine. Select one that caused you to form images, and tell it so that the hearers will form like images.

+Theme XIII.+—Reproduce a story read to you by the teacher.

(Before writing, picture to yourself the scenes and recall the order of their occurrence. If it is necessary to condense, omit events of the least importance.)

+29. Comparison.+—Writing which contains unfamiliar words fails to call up complete and definite images. It is often difficult to form the correct mental picture, even though the words in themselves are familiar. Definitions, explanations, and descriptions may cause us to understand correctly, but our understanding usually can be improved by means of a comparison. We can form an image of an object as soon as we know what it is like.

If I wished you to form an image of an okapi, a lengthy description would give you a less vivid picture than the statement that it was a horselike animal, having stripes similar to those of a zebra. If an okapi were as well known to you as is a horse, the name alone would call up the proper image, and no comparison would be necessary. By means of it we are enabled to picture the unfamiliar. In this case the comparison is literal.

If the comparison is imaginative rather than literal, our language becomes figurative, and usually takes the form of a simile or metaphor. Similes and metaphors are of great value in rendering thought clear. They make language forceful and effective, and they may add much to the beauty of expression.

We may speak of an object as being like another, or as acting like another. If the comparison is imaginative rather than literal, and is directly stated, the expression is a simile. Similes are introduced by like, as, etc.

He fought like a lion.

The river wound like a serpent around the mountains.

If two things are essentially different, but yet have a common quality, their implied comparison is a metaphor. A metaphor takes the form of a statement that one is the other.

"He was a lion in the fight."

"The river wound its serpent course."

Sometimes inanimate objects, abstract ideas, or the lower animals are given the attributes of human beings. Such a figure is called personification, and is in fact a modified metaphor, since it is based upon some resemblance of the lower to the higher.

This music crept by me upon the waters.

Time is a very bankrupt, and owes more than he is worth to

season.

Nay, he's a thief, too; have you not heard men say,

That time comes stealing on by night and day?

—Shakespeare.

+30. Use of Figures of Speech.+—The three figures of speech, simile, metaphor, and personification, are more frequently used than are the others. Figures of speech are treated in a later chapter, but some suggestions as to their use will be of value to beginners.

1. Never write for the purpose of using figures of speech. Nearly everything that we need to say can be well expressed in plain, bare English, and the ability to express our thoughts in this way is the essential thing. If a figure that adds to the force and clearness of your expression occurs to you, use it without hesitation. A figure may also add to the beauty of our expression. The examples to be found in literature are largely of this character. If well used, they are effective, but the beginner should beware of a figure that is introduced for decorative purposes only. An attempt to find figures of speech in ordinary prose writing will show how rarely they are used.

2. The figures should fit the subject in hand. Some comparisons are appropriate and some are not. If the writer is familiar with his subject and deeply in earnest, the appropriate figures will rise spontaneously in his mind. If they do not, little is gained by seeking for them.

3. The effectiveness of a comparison, whether literal or figurative, depends upon the familiarity of the reader with one of the two things compared. To say that a petrel resembled a kite would be of no value to one who knew nothing of either bird. Similarly a figure is defective if neither element of the comparison is familiar to the readers.

4. Suitable figures give picturesqueness and vivacity to language, but hackneyed figures are worse than none.

5. Elaborate and long-drawn-out figures, or an overabundance of short ones, should be avoided.

6. A figure must be consistent throughout. A comparison once begun must be carried through without change; mixing figures often produces results which are ridiculous. The "mixed metaphor" is a common blunder of beginners. This fault may arise either from confusing different metaphors in the same sentence, or from blending literal language with metaphorical. The following will serve to illustrate:—

1. [Confused metaphor.] Let us pin our faith to the rock of perseverance and honest toil, where it may sail on to success on the wings of hope.

2. [Literal and figurative blended.] Washington was the father of his country and a surveyor of ability.

3. When the last awful moment came, the star of liberty went down with all on board.

4. The glorious work will never be accomplished until the good ship "Temperance" shall sail from one end of the land to the other, and with a cry of "Victory!" at each step she takes, shall plant her banner in every city, town, and village in the United States.

5. All along the untrodden paths of the future we see the hidden footprints of an unseen hand.

6. The British lion, whether it is roaming the deserts of India, or climbing the forests of Canada, will never draw in its horns nor retire into its shell.

7. Young man, if you have the spark of genius in you, water it.