Red Eyes

George Orwell’s Politics And The English Language

Argument: The English language has become ugly and inactive due to the foolishness of our thoughts and our way of expressing them. This decay has further led to the decay in society.

No Limits: A Cliché

After a class dedicated to George Orwell and his beliefs on language, I feel that I should analyze the way Whitman’s talks. It was clear to me that the decay in language also led to the decay in society. They are connected and dependent upon each other. Orwell makes more emphasis on the way we are currently using language. Each time we try to use a French word or Greek word they decay speeds up. It can be considered sad or part of the normal change, but I personally think it is part of the change that must occur. Whitman, as a previous author, could have taught Orwell, and Orwell went ahead expressing that what Whitman wrote was great and how we must continue it. An author today will say that what Orwell wrote was great and will write about how to continue it. The future author will write about the present author, and so on. This process will continue to repeat itself, leading to a change, which does not have to be stopped. This change is what has kept the language alive and will continue to do so.

I now decided to take a passage from one of the poems: “I believe in those wing’d purposes, /And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me, /And consider green and violet, and the tufted crown, intentional;/ And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else; /And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me; /And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me” (13). Orwell mentioned that a good author would not have any extra words. When reading this poem it is hard for me to believe that not one word is superfluous. Reading it several times, the only thing that could be eliminated are some of the colors. This is merely a speculation, since in my lack of knowledge, I might not appreciate every word and therefore believe it can be eliminated. What this has taught me is that there are no limits to the learning and analysis that can be done. Nothing is extra until you can prove it.

A Different Approach: Words

The fist thing that struck me when I stared reading the poems was repetition: “I loafe and invite my Soul;

I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass” (Poem 1). I do not know if repetition is a type of style, but if it is, Whitman loves it. I personally like repetition, to a certain point. It can be funny and will get the message across. When it turns bad, is when it starts becoming a tongue twister. Whitman has not gone to this extent but he is close. Even though his poems mention a range of different things his style stays the same.

In the third poem I encountered the mild tongue twister: “I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end;

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end” (Poem 3). What this does is it creates a different image of the poem and changes the way I read it. I do not approach it as I would a novel. By doing this it is suddenly unique. We mentioned Clichés in class today, and what Whitman did can be an example of the opposite. Even though I do not know that much about poetry, his poems captivated me only be the wording.

Simple But Great

As I come to the end of Flaubert’s masterpiece I can only think of his theme. It is a story that is based on the boring life of Felicite and her misfortune. This plot might have been able to capture the reader for about twenty pages, but nor more. Flaubert decided to make a much longer book that is surprisingly entertaining. What then, could the reason for this be? The only answer is style. The way the book is written is the best part of the book. It is not a unique and unforgettable story but its style is. Each description gives the reader the option of performing a very detailed close reading: “He was called Loulou. His body was green, his head blue, the tips of his wings were pink and his breast was golden. But he had the tiresome tricks of biting his perch, pulling his feathers out, scattering refuse and spilling the water of his bath. Madame Aubain grew tired of him and gave him to Felicite for good” (Ch. 4). It is surprising that this is true, since writing it must have taken a very long time.

There is a certain simplicity and complexity that is felt when reading A Simple Soul. That balance is what makes it entertaining, and it is what gives the reader the choice of how to read the book. They can either analyze every word that is mentioned or read through the monotonous story of Felicite. The name, A Simple Soul, includes the word simple, which might allude to the stories simplicity or complexity. There is nothing that cannot be taken into consideration when reading, and that itself is worth writing a book about.

A Long Time

As a novice to style, the class we had today was very enlightening. I never believed that so much could be deducted from a single sentence. With this basic knowledge of style now in my head, I can go ahead and read Flaubert in a much more enriching way. His style is one that I have never read before. The descriptions of certain objects are amazing. His sentences, paragraphs, and chapters vary in length drastically. Chapter two is much longer than chapter one, and each paragraph not only introduces a new idea but it does it in different lengths. This format combined with the use of punctuation and commas maintains the reader interested.

He is able to describe monotony but his book is exactly the opposite: “Every Monday morning, the dealer in second-hand goods, who lived under the alley-way, spread out his wares on the sidewalk” (Chapter 2). This aspect is perhaps the one that I like the most about his style. Assimilation is something that I rarely notice, but Flaubert can do it so his words not only describe what is in the book but the book itself. A perfect example is one of the passages we read today: “The priest first read a condensed lesson of sacred history” (Chapter 2). The reader can see that the word “condensed” not only describes the priest but the sentence. It is small and to the point. The way style is used can only make me think of time. Flaubert has made each sentence so perfect that you could write several pages about it. Even though I doubted this could be possible Flaubert pulled it of. How long he took seems short in comparison to what he did.