CHAPTER III

DESCRIPTION

Description is the kind of speech or of writing that aims to give an exact impression of a thing that the speaker or the writer has either perceived or imagined.

Whatever may be seen, heard, smelled, felt, or tasted, i.e., whatever may be perceived through the senses, is material for description. A description must take one of two forms according to its purpose: it must be either (1) artistic description, or (2) scientific, or enumerative, description.

Artistic Description. Artistic description is description which aims to arouse in the listener or the reader the same feeling that the object described would arouse. Most artistic descriptions are word pictures of landscapes, of settlements, of buildings or parts of buildings, or of people.

Selection and Characterization of Details. Read the following description, forming the picture as you read:

Immediately below him the hillside fell away, clean and cleared, for fifteen hundred feet, where a little village of stone-walled houses, with roofs of beaten earth, clung to the steep tilt. All around it the tiny terraced fields lay out like aprons of patchwork on the knees of the mountain, and cows no bigger than beetles grazed between the smooth stone circles of the threshing floors. Looking across the valley, the eye was deceived by the size of things and could not at first realize that what seemed to be low scrub on the opposite mountain flank, was in truth a forest of hundredfoot pines. Purun Bhagat saw an eagle swoop across the gigantic hollow, but the great bird dwindled to a dot ere it was halfway over. A few bands of scattered clouds strung up and down the valley, catching on a shoulder of the hills or rising up and dying out when they were level with the head of the pass. The Miracle of Purun Bhagat, KIPLING.

The selection gives a view in a high mountainous country by picturing the details prominent in the view in their right relation to one another and in the order in which they were noticed by the observer. Each of these main details, i.e., the hillside, a village with its surrounding fields, the valley, an eagle, and bands of scattered clouds, is brought out by those of its characteristics which catch the attention of the observer. For instance, the little village is pictured by means of its "stone-walled houses with roofs of beaten earth"; the fields are pictured as "aprons of patchwork," and the threshing floors as "smooth stone circles." As each new detail is given, its position is carefully suggested: the little village "clung to the steep tilt"; "the tiny terraced fields lay out all round the village"; the eagle "swooped across the valley." The details come into view from near to far, the order in which they are naturally noticed by any observer looking at the prospect from the point of view indicated by the words, "Immediately below him the hillside fell away, clean and cleared, for fifteen hundred feet," i.e., from a spot on the hillside high above the view.

The Main Impression. Every detail in the description helps to bring out the main impression given by the view a sense of immense distance. From a point of view fifteen hundred feet above a settlement only such details can be seen as are in some way conspicuous at a distance. The only details of the village and its surroundings which are given are the stone walls and the dirt roofs of the houses, the varied color of the fields, the moving cows, the shape and the material of the threshing floors. From a point of view far distant from the thing seen, only enormous masses or enormous areas are noticeable. The only detail noticeable across the wide valley is a forest of hundred-foot pines. An object moving directly away from a point of view

gradually diminishes in size until it becomes lost in the distance. In this picture, the eagle, swooping across the valley, dwindles to a dot before it is halfway over.

Summary. This word picture has been made by using the details which give the main impression of the view, by picturing them by means of their most prominent characteristics, by placing them in their right relation to one another, and by giving them in the order in which they naturally come into sight from the point of view of the observer.

Picture the following scenes:

EXERCISE I

A

The road lay through the bleak countryside of the salt marshes which stretched themselves away toward the sea, dotted here and there with haycocks, and crossed in wavering lines by the inlets and ditches, filled now with grayish ice, that was sinking and cracking as the tide ran out. The marsh grass was wind-swept and beaten until it looked as soft and brown as fur; the wind had free course over it, and it looked like a deserted bit of the world. - Deephaven, JEwett.

B

The school was a long, cold-looking house, one story high, with a few straggling out-buildings behind and a barn and stable adjoining. - Nicholas Nickleby, DICKENS.

C.

Genestas seated himself in a corner by the fireless hearth. A sublime symbol met his eyes on the high mantel-shelf above him a colored plaster cast of the Virgin with the Child Jesus in her arms. Bare earth made the flooring of the cottage. It had been beaten level in the first instance, but in course of time it had grown rough and uneven, so that though it was clean, its ruggedness was not unlike that of the magnified rind of an orange. A sabot filled with salt, a frying pan, and a large kettle hung inside the chimney. The farther end of the room was com

pletely filled by a four-post bedstead, with a scalloped valance for decoration. The walls were black; there was an opening to admit the light above the worm-eaten door; and here and there were a few stools consisting of rough blocks of beech wood, each set upon three wooden legs. A hutch for bread, a large wooden dipper, a bucket and some earthen milkpans, a spinning wheel on the top of the bread-hutch, and a few wicker mats for draining cheeses formed the remaining ornaments and household furniture of the wretched dwelling.

D

Ere twilight I examined John's room. It was a good deal changed; the furniture was improved; a score of ingenious little contrivances made the tiny attic into a cozy bed-chamber. One corner was full of shelves laden with books, chiefly of a scientific and practical nature. . . . He evidently still practiced his old mechanical arts. There was lying in the window a telescope - the cylinder made of pasteboard—into which the lenses were ingeniously fitted. A rough telescope stand of common deal stood on the ledge of the roof, from which the field of view must have been satisfactory enough to the young astronomer. Other fragments of skillful handiwork, chiefly meant for machinery on a Lilliputian scale, were strewn about the floor; and on a chair, just as he had left it that morning, stood a loom, very small in size, but perfect in its neat workmanship, with a few threads already woven, making some fabric not so very unlike cloth. -John Halifax, Gentleman, MULOCK.

E

It was a bitter cold morning. The snow, which had been falling heavily all night, lay in great drifts on the eaves of the houses and almost covered the fences, while the cutting north wind brought a sort of hail with it that made one shiver. Everybody in the little village of Wynn seemed cautious of venturing forth; the very houses looked sleepy and cold in the semi-darkness of half-past seven o'clock on a December morning. The low wooden tavern, with its yellow doors and green blinds, seemed to be the only place where any life was stirring, and even that was confined to a small group of three people, standing huddled together in a corner of the piazza which was most sheltered from the wind and hail. - Marjorie's Quest, J. T. GOULD.

In each description:

1. State the point of view of the observer.

2. Name the chief impression given by the scene.

3. Name the details that help to give this impression and tell the characteristics by which they are pictured.

4. Tell how the position of each detail is indicated.

THEME I

1. Describe some landscape which you know as it looks after a snow

storm.

2. Describe the same landscape on a summer day.

3. Describe a room which gives a pleasant impression to a chance observer.

4. Describe a room which gives an unpleasant impression to a chance observer.

In each description :

a. How have you indicated your point of view?

b. What chief impression have you tried to suggest ?

c. How do the details you have used suggest this chief impression? d. How have you indicated the position of the details ?

The Right Development of Details. It is very important that whatever is put into an artistic description shall suggest the chief impression which the object described makes upon an observer. Sometimes a detail in itself suggests the chief impression, as flame suggests fire, icicle, winter cold, marsh, low, damp ground; but, more often, a detail suggests a chief impression, not in itself, but through some characteristics which it has under particular circumstances. When this is the case, it is important that the details be depicted by the characteristics which together produce the chief impression.

Picture the following scene:

It was high noon, and the rays of the sun, that hung poised directly overhead in an intolerable white glory, fell straight as plummets upon the roofs and streets of Guadalajara. The adobe walls and sparse brick side