*SPOILER ALERT*
*SPOILER ALERT*
*SPOILER ALERT*
.........Ruth May dies. I felt angry with Nathan's treatment of his family and frusturated with his style of missionary approach to the Congolese. I felt proud of Leah's transformation into a free-thinking, independent woman. I felt horrified and terrible when Orleanna recounted eating dirt while pregnant just to fill her stomach with something. I felt all of these things and many others while reading the book. This level of engagement that Kingsolver has elicited from me is something I hope to achieve in my writing. But my initial question is, how does she do it?
In one of our recent classes, we mapped out some of the central ideas from the Bel and the Serpent chapter. It became clear what I would write about in this blog post when we analyzed Ruth May's death. After her death, the native villagers in Kilanga came to mourn in front of the Prices' house and shrieked their strange, high, quivering, mourning song as if Ruth May were one of their own. This sad yet inspiring image allowed me to truly get a sense of how the Price women had become a part of the Kilanga community. The classic phrase here is "Show Don't Tell." Despite the cliché, this idea of showing and describing with detail to the reader is so much more engaging and emotionally powerful than merely writing, "By this time, the Price women had become accepted in the Kilanga community."
Kingsolver's writing succeeds at transporting the reader to Africa with the Prices. Her imagery and detail are extremely well-crafted. When the girls and Nelson discover the green mamba in the chicken house and see it shoot past them, the speed of scene is captured in one sentence. It is not even discovered that Ruth May has been fatally bitten until the next chapter. Here, Kingsolver shows that Ruth May's sisters were helpless to save her.This idea of showing rather than telling paints a better picture for the reader, and gives them a better understanding of the situation or subject. Combined with imagery, details and descriptive writing, the author is able to engage the reader, bring them into the story and allow them to really connect with it. Once the reader has connected to the story, poem, speech, etc. the author's message becomes infinitely more powerful, not to mention more clearly communicated.
Nick,
ReplyDeleteFirst, thanks for the spoiler alerts. Second, while reading your description of how Kingsolver transports us with her writing, I noticed that the language was fairly similar to language I would've used to describe fantasy/fiction stories like Redwall or Lord of the Rings back in the day when there was time to read in my spare time (funny, right?). In any case, I was wondering if you think there's a different deployment of descriptive language when the end goal of the author is to make a point not about mice with swords but serious issues?
While I'm tempted to say that fantastical writing obviously uses more fantastical descriptions, I feel like the hook/line/sinker are the same in both fantasy and real-world-message genre, it's just that once you've swallowed the bait, Kingsolver gives us stomachaches.
Mitch,
ReplyDeleteFirst, thank you for commenting! I definitely agree with your observation. I think that despite the fact that characters in Redwall, Lord of the Rings and other fantasy stories are not human, the are very humanlike characters. They speak, have feelings and act in ways just like humans do. I'd even go so far as to say that the only really nonhuman aspect of characters like these are their bodies. The objective of the author is still to connect with the (human) reader and create characters they can empathize with. Showing rather than telling is an excellent way to do this. I think that's why you've found some striking similarities in the deployment of descriptive language between fantasy novels and novels like The Poisonwood Bible.