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Файл:Композиция английской письменной речи. Учебное пособие.pdf
4. DESCRIPTION
The sound of hot dogs sizzling on a grease-spattered grill gave way to the
whirling buzz of a cotton-candy machine. Fascinated, we watched as the white
cardboard cone was slowly transformed into a pink, fluffy cloud. Despite their
fiberglass appearance, the sticky puffs dissolved on my tongue into a sugar-like
sweetness. Soon our faces and hands were gummed with a sticky mess.
You are there. Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting. This is one student
writer's description of a small segment of a county fair. Effective description
creates sharply etched word pictures of objects, persons, scenes, events, or
situations. Sensory impressions – reflecting sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch –
form the backbone of descriptive writing. Often, they build toward one
dominant impression that the writer wants to evoke.
The human mind is not merely a logical thinking machine. Because of our
emotional makeup, we react with shock to a photo of a battered victim of child
abuse. We feel stirrings of nostalgia upon hearing a song from our past. We
smile with satisfaction when quenching our summer thirst with tart sips from a
tall, frosted drink. Responses like these, as much as the ability to think
rationally, help define the human makeup.
Many occasions call for description. Your chemistry instructor might ask
you to characterize the appearance and odor of a series of substances prepared in
the laboratory; your art instructor might want you to describe a painting; your
hospitality management instructor might have you portray an appealing banquet
room. On the job, a realtor might write a glowing advertisement to sell a house,
a nurse describe the postoperative status of a surgical incision, and a journalist
describe the eruption of a volcano. All are attempts to capture the world through
description.
Purpose
Sometimes description stands alone; sometimes it enriches other writing.
It appears in histories and biographies, fiction and poetry, journalism and
advertising, and occasionally even in technical writing. Some descriptions
merely create images and mood, as when a writer paints a word picture of a
boggy, fog-shrouded moor. But description can also stimulate understanding or
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lead to action. A historian may juxtapose the splendor of French court life with
the wretchedness of a Paris slum to help explain the French Revolution. And
everyone knows the persuasive power of advertising's descriptive enticements.
Description will provide effective backup for the writing you do in your
composition classes, helping you to drive home your points vividly.
Sensory Impressions
Precise sensory impressions begin with close physical or mental
observation. If you can reexamine your subject, do it. If not, recall it to mind;
then capture its features with appropriate words. When you can't find the right
words, try a comparison. Ask yourself what your subject (or part of it) might be
likened to. Does it smell like a rotten egg? A ripe cantaloupe? Burning rubber?
Does it sound like a high sigh? A soft rustle? To come across, the comparison
must be accurate and familiar. If the reader has never smelled a rotten egg, the
point is lost.
Here is a passage marked by particularly vivid sight impressions:
After our meal we went for a stroll across the plateau. The day was
already drawing to a close as we sat down upon a ledge of rock near the lip of
the western precipice. From where we sat, as though perched high upon a cloud,
we looked out into a gigantic void. Far below, the stream we had crossed that
afternoon was a pencil-thin trickle of silver barely visible in the gloaming.
Across it, on the other side, the red hills rose one upon another in gentle folds,
fading into the distance where the purple thumblike mountains of Adua and
Yeha stretched against the sky like a twisting serpent. As we sat, the sun sank
fast, and the heavens in the western sky began to glow. It was a coppery fire at
first, the orange streaked with aquamarine; but rapidly the firmament expanded
into an explosion of red and orange that burst across the sky sending tongues of
flame through the feathery clouds to the very limits of the heavens. When the
flames had reached their zenith, a great quantity of storks came flying from the
south. They circled above us once, their slender bodies sleek and black against
the orange sky. Then, gathering together, they flew off into the setting sun,
leaving us alone in peace to contemplate. One of the monks who sat with us,
hushed by the intensity of the moment, muttered a prayer. The sun died beyond
the hills; and the fire withdrew.
Robert Dick-Read, Sanamu: Adventures in Search of African Art
At first, the western sky glows with a “coppery fire,” which then expands
into “an explosion of red and orange” that sends “tongues of flame” heavenward
and then withdraws as the sun disappears. Comparisons strengthen the visual
impression: the “pencil-thin” stream, the “thumblike” mountains stretching
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across the sky “like a twisting serpent.” The familiar pencil, thumb, and serpent
help us to visualize the unfamiliar landscape.
Most descriptions blend several sense impressions rather than focusing on
just one. In the following excerpt, Mark Twain, reminiscing about his uncle's
farm, includes all five. As you read it, note which impressions are most
effective.
As I have said, I spent some part of every year at the farm until I was
twelve or thirteen years old. The life which I led there with my cousins was full
of charm, and so is the memory of it yet. I can call back the solemn twilight and
mystery of the deep woods, the earthy smells, the faint odors of the wild flowers,
the sheen of rain-washed foliage, the rattling clatter of drops when the wind
shook the trees, the far-off hammering of woodpeckers and the muffled drumming
of wood pheasants in the remoteness of the forest, the snapshot glimpses of
disturbed wild creatures scurrying through the grass—I can call it all back and
make it as real as it ever was, and as blessed. I can call back the prairie, and its
loneliness and peace, and a vast hawk hanging motionless in the sky, with his
wings spread wide and the blue of the vault showing through the fringe of their
end feathers. I can see the woods in their autumn dress, the oaks purple, the
hickories washed with gold, the maples and the sumachs luminous with crimson
fires, and 1 can hear the rustle made by the fallen leaves as we plowed through
them. I can see the blue clusters of wild grapes hanging among the foliage of the
saplings, and I remember the taste of them and the smell. I know how the wild
blackberries looked, and how they tasted, and the same with the pawpaws, the
hazelnuts, and the persimmons; and I can feel the thumping rain, upon my head,
of hickory nuts and walnuts when we were out in the frosty dawn to scramble for
them with the pigs, and the gusts of wind loosed them and sent them down. I know
the stain of blackberries, and how pretty it is, and I know the stain of walnut hulls,
and how little it minds soap and water, also what grudged experience it had of
either of them. I know the taste of maple sap, and when to gather it, and how to
arrange the troughs and the delivery tubes, and how to boil down the juice, and
how to hook the sugar after it is made, also how much better hooked sugar tastes
than any that is honestly come by, let bigots say what they will.
Mark Twain, Autobiography
Exercise. Spend some time in an environment such as one of the
following. Concentrate on one sense at a time. Begin by observing what you see;
then jot down the precise impressions you receive. Now do the same for
impressions of touch, taste, smell, and sound.
1. The woods in the early morning
2. A city intersection
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3. A restaurant or cafeteria
4. A scenic spot under a full moon
5. A storm
6. A pool or other recreation area
7. A crowded classroom or hallway
8. A grocery store
9. A park or playground
10 A holiday gathering
Dominant Impression
Skillful writers select and express sensory perceptions in order to create a
dominant impression—an overall mood or feeling such as joy, anger, terror, or
distaste. This impression may be identified or left unnamed for the reader to
deduce. Whatever the choice, a verbal picture of a storm about to strike, for
example, might be crafted to evoke feelings of fear by describing sinister masses
of slaty clouds, cannon salvos of thunder, blinding lightning flashes, and
viciously swirling wind-caught dust.
The following paragraph establishes a sense of security as the dominant
impression:
A marvelous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars together with the
serenity of their rays seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance of everlasting
security. The young moon recurved, and shining low in the west, was like a
slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold, and the Arabian Sea, smooth and
cool to the eye like a sheet of ice, extended its perfect level to the perfect circle
of a dark horizon. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had
been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two
folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed
within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in
a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind,
agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship,
subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of
water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in
its centre.
Joseph Conrad, Lordjim
The first sentence directly identifies the impression, "security," to which
the “stillness” and the “serenity” contribute. Other details also do their part: the
“smooth” sea, the “perfect circle” of the horizon, the “safe universe,” the quick
calming of the water, and the moving hull “everlastingly” in the center of water
and sky.
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Exercise. Select one of the following topics and write a paragraph that
evokes a particular dominant impression. Omit any details that run counter to
your aim.
1. A multi-alarm fire
2. A repair facility (automobile, appliance, and so on)
3. A laboratory
4. Some aspect of summer in a particular place
5. A religious service
6. A doctor's or dentist's office
7. A dark street
8. A parade or other celebration
9. Some landmark on your college campus
10. A municipal night court or small-claims court
Vantage Point
You may write a description from either a fixed or a moving vantage
point. A fixed observer remains in one place and reports only what can be
perceived from there. Here is how Marilyn Kluger describes the Thanksgiving
morning sounds she remembers hearing from her bed as a child:
On the last Thursday in November, I could stay in bed only until the night
chill left the house, hearing first the clash of the heavy grates in the huge black
iron range, with its flowery scrolls and nickled decorations, as Mother shook
down the ashes. Then, in their proper sequence, came the sounds of the fire
being made – the rustle of newspaper, the snap of kindling, the rush of smoke up
the chimney when Mother opened the damper, slid the regulator wide open, and
struck a match to the kerosene-soaked corncobs that started a quick hot fire. I
listened for the hang of the cast-iron lid dropping back into place and for the
tick of the stovepipes as fierce flames sent up their heat, then the sound of the lid
being lifted again as Mother fed more dry wood and lumps of coal to the greedy
new fire. The duties of the kitchen on Thanksgiving were a thousandfold, and I
could tell that Mother was bustling about with a quicker step than usual.
Marilyn Kluger, A Time of Plenty
A moving observer views things from a number of positions, signaling
changes in location with phrases such as “moving through the turnstile” and “as
I walked around the corner.” Below, H. L. Mencken takes us with him as he
observes from a moving express train.
On a Winter day some years ago, coming out of Pittsburgh on one of the
expresses of the Pennsylvania Railroad, I rolled eastward for an hour through
the coal and steel towns of Westmoreland county. It was familiar ground; boy
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and man, I had been through it often before. But somehow I had never quite
sensed its appalling desolation. Here was the very heart of industrial America,
the center of its most lucrative and characteristic activity, the boast and pride of
the richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth – and here was a scene so
dreadfully hideous, so intolerably bleak and forlorn that it reduced the whole
aspiration of man to a macabre and depressing joke. Here was wealth beyond
computation, almost beyond imagination – and here were human habitations so
abominable that they would have disgraced a race of alley cats.
I am not speaking of mere filth. One expects steel towns to be dirty. What I
allude to is the unbroken and agonizing ugliness, the sheer revolting monstrousness, of every house in sight. From East Liberty to Greensburg, a distance of
twenty-five miles, there was not one in sight from the train that did not insult
and lacerate the eye. Some were so bad, and they were among the most
pretentious – churches, stores, warehouses, and the like – that they were
downright startling; one blinked before them as one blinks before a man with his
face shot away. A few linger in memory, horrible even there: a crazy little
church just west of Jeannette, set like a dormer-window on the side of a bare,
leprous hill; the headquarters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars at another
forlorn town, a steel stadium like a huge rat-trap somewhere further down the
line. But most of all I recall the general effect – of hideousness without a break.
There was not a single decent house within eye-range from the Pittsburgh
suburbs to the Greensburg yards. There was not one that was not misshapen,
and there was not one that was not shabby.
H. L. Mencken, The Libido for Lilie Ugly
The phrase “on one of the expresses of the Pennsylvania Railroad” signals
that Mencken will be a moving observer, and “From East Liberty to
Greensburg” pinpoints the extent of his journey. “West of Jeannette,” “another
forlorn town,” and “somewhere further down the line” specify the positions
from which he views the church, the headquarters of the veterans' organization,
and the stadium.
Whatever your vantage point, fixed or moving, report only what would be
apparent to someone on the scene. If you describe how a distant mountain looks
from a balcony, don't suddenly leap to a description of a mountain flower: you
couldn't see it from your vantage point.
Exercise. Writing as a fixed observer, describe in a paragraph your
impressions of one of the following. Be sure to indicate your vantage point.
1. A post office lobby two weeks before Christmas
2. The scene following a traffic accident
3. A classroom when the bell rings
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4. A campus lounge
5. An office
6. The entrance to some building
Exercise. Writing as a moving observer, describe in a paragraph or two
your impressions as you do one of the following things. Clearly signal your
movements to the reader.
1. Walk from one class to another
2. Shop in a grocery store
3. Walk from your home to the corner
4. Cross a long bridge
5. Water-ski
6. Go through a ticket line and enter a theater, auditorium, or sports arena
Selection of Details
Effective description depends as much on exclusion as on inclusion. Don't
try to pack every possible detail into your paper by providing an inventory of,
for example, a room's contents or a natural setting's elements. Such an approach
shows only that you can see, not write. Instead, select details that deliberately
point toward the mood or feeling you intend to create. Read the following
student description of nighttime skiing:
The glowing orb of the moon, shedding its pale, silvery radiance on the
ski slope, seemed to cast a spell. Crystal iridescence of powdered snow twinkled
in the night. Shadows cast by the skiers appeared as mysterious silhouettes
darting in and out among snow-covered trees. The gentle breeze combing
through the branches created a lulling musical chant which drifted into my
head, taking control. Delicate snowflakes danced by, kissed me on the face, and
seemed to beckon me up the hill.
Sue Mutch
This writer evokes a sense of enchantment by noting the “pale, silvery
radiance” of the moon, the “crystal iridescence” of the snow, the “mysterious
silhouettes” of the skiers, and the “lulling musical chant” of the wind. She ignores
such details as the boisterous snatches of conversation among the skiers, the
crunch of ski poles digging into the snow, and the creaking towline moving to the
top of the slope. Mentioning these things would detract from the desired mood.
Arrangement of Details
Description, like any other writing, must have a clear pattern of
organization to guide the reader and help you fulfill your purpose. Often some
spatial arrangement works nicely. You might, for example, move systematically
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from top to bottom, left to right, front to back, nearby to far away, or the reverse
of these patterns. To describe Saturday afternoon at the football game, you
might start with the crowded parking lot; move into the bustling stadium; and
finally zoom in on the sights, sounds, and smells of the playing field. Or if you
wanted to highlight the surroundings rather than the central event, the order
could be reversed. Going another route, you might start with some striking
central feature and then branch out to the things around it. To capture the center
of a mall, you might first describe its ornate fountain illuminated with flashing,
multicolored lights, shift to the reflection of the lights on the skylight above, and
end by portraying the surrounding store fronts.
Sometimes a description follows a time sequence. A writer might, for
example, portray the changes in a woodland setting as winter gives way to
spring and spring, in turn, yields to summer.
Planning and Drafting the Description
If you're choosing your own topic, always select one that is familiar. Don't
describe the inside of a restaurant kitchen or Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone
National Park if you've never seen either one. Instead, opt for some place where
you've actually worked or a locale you've recently visited. If you keep a journal,
thumb through it for possible leads.
For each potential topic that surfaces, ask yourself the following
questions. They will direct your attention to matters you'll need to address.
1. What do I want to accomplish by writing this description? Create one
or more impressions? Help the reader understand something? Persuade the
reader to act?
2. Who is my audience and why would this topic interest them? What
dominant impression will I develop?
3. To help gather and organize support for your topic, pose these
additional questions:
4. What details should I include?
5. What sensory impressions are associated with each detail? (Jot down
any words that you feel will best convey the impressions.)
6. How does each detail contribute to the dominant impression?
7. What sequence should I follow in presenting my impressions?
After brainstorming a list of potential details, you might use mapping to
start accumulating sensory impressions.
Begin your paper with an introduction that eases the reader into your
topic. You might, for example, provide a historical overview, ask a provocative
question, or snare the reader's attention with an arresting statement.
Develop each major feature in one or more paragraphs. Present each
feature in the order you've mapped out. To ensure that the reader follows your
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thoughts, clearly signal any shifts in vantage point or time. As you write, aim for
vivid, original language. We've all encountered writers who tell us that raindrops
“pitter-patter,” clouds are “fleecy white,” and the sun is “a ball of fire.” Such
stale, worn-out language does nothing to sharpen our vision of the rain, the
clouds, or the sun. In contrast, read how one student describes the sounds in her
kitchen at breakfast time:
Sure signs of a new day are the sounds in the kitchen as breakfast is
prepared. The high sigh of the gas just before it whooshes into flame and settles
into a whispering hum blends with the gurgling of the water for the morning
coffee. Soon the gloop, gloop, gloop of the coffee sets up a perky beat. Then in
mingles the crackle of creamy butter on a hot skillet and the shush of an egg
added to the pan. Ribbons of bacon start to sizzle in the spitting grease. The soft
rustle of plastic as bread is removed from its wrapper contributes to the medley.
The can opener whirs, and the orange juice concentrate drops with a splat into
the blender, which whizzes together the orange cylinder and splashed-in water.
For minutes after the blender stops, bubbles of various sizes fizz.
Kim Burson Swiger
You are there in the kitchen, hearing the carefully selected and freshly
described sounds.
A word of caution about making your writing vivid. Some students are
tempted to enhance their descriptions by stringing together a chain of adjectives
without considering the effect on a reader. Think how you'd react if told that
“A dented, cylindrical, silver-gray, foul-smelling, overloaded trash can sat
in the alley.”
As you can see, more than the garbage can is overloaded here. Resist the
temptation to inject similar sentences into your description. Carefully examine
your adjectives and eliminate those that don't advance your purpose.
End your paper by pulling your material together in some way. If you've
created an impression or mood, you might offer your reaction to it. If you want
your reader to understand something, you might spell your message out. If you
wish to persuade, you might urge some action.
Revising the Description
As you revise, ask the following questions:
1. Have I written with a clear sense of purpose and audience in mind?
2. Have I conveyed how my topic looks, sounds, feels, tastes, or smells?
Would comparisons or more precise descriptive terms help convey my perceptions?
3. Have I evoked one dominant impression? Can I strengthen this
impression by adding certain selected details? By eliminating details that detract
from the impression?
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4. Have I used an appropriate vantage point? If the observer is moving,
have I signaled changes in location? Have I included only details that would be
visible to the observer?
5. Have I arranged my details in an order appropriate to the topic?
Exercise. Choose one of the following topics that your teacher approves
for an essay of description. Create a dominant impression by using carefully
chosen, well-organized details observed from the appropriate vantage point. Try
to write so that the reader actually experiences your description.
1. Holiday shopping
2. A rock concert
3. A graduation audience
4. A pet store or zoo
5. The view from your bedroom window
6. Getting caught in a storm
7. A fast-food restaurant
8. After a party
9. An outdoor place of special importance to you
10. Your car
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