Detail

__** Detail 1 **__ //Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Whenever he was so fortunate as to have near him a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat pie made with rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violence that his veins swelled, and the moisture broke out on his forehead.

- Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Samuel Johnson”

__ Discuss __ :

1. What effect does the detail (the **//spoiled//** hare, the **//rancid//** butter, the **//swollen//** veins, the **//sweaty//** forehead) have on the reader?

2. How would the meaning of the sentence be changed by the ending it after **//himself//**?

__** Detail 2 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

An old man, Don Tomasito, the baker, played the tuba. When he blew into the huge mouthpiece, his face would turn purple and his thousand wrinkles would disappear as his skin filled out. - Alberto Alvaro Rios, “The Iguana Killer”

__ Discuss __ :

1. The first sentence is a general statement. How does the second sentence enrich and intensify the first?

2.Contrast the second sentence with the following:


 * // When he blew the tuba, his face turned purple and his cheeks puffed out. //**

What sentence more effectively expresses an attitude toward Tomasito? What is that attitude and how is it communicated?

__** Detail 3 **__ //Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

CHARLEY (TO WILLY): Why must everybody like you? Who liked J.P. Morgan? Was he impressive? In a Turkish bath he’d look like a butcher. But with his pockets on he was very well liked. Now listen, Willy, I know you don’t like me, and nobody can say I’m in love with you, but I’ll give you a job because – just for the hell of it, put it that way. Now what do you say?

- Arthur Miller, //Death of a Salesman//

__ Discuss __ :

1. Who was J.P. Morgan? What is a Turkish bath? What picture comes to mind when someone is said to look like a butcher? How do these details contribute to Charley’s point?

2. How would the passage be different if Charley said J.P. Morgan would look like a baker in a Turkish bath?

__** Detail 4 **__ //Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

To those who saw him often he seemed almost like two men: one the merry monarch of the hunt and banquet and procession, the friend of children, the patron of every kind of sport; the other the cold acute observer of the audience chamber of the Council, watching vigilantly, weighing arguments, refusing except under the stress of great events to speak his own mind.

- Winston Churchill, //Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples//

__ Discuss __ :

1. Churchill draws attention to the contrasting sides of Henry VIII through detail. How is the impact of this sentence strengthened by the order of the details’ presentation?

2. What is Churchill’s attitude toward Henry? What specific details reveal this attitude?

__** Detail 5 **__ //Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

The truck lurched down the goat path, over the bridge and swung south toward El Puerto. I watch carefully all that we left behind. We passed Rosie’s house and at the clothesline right at the edge of the cliff there was a young girl hanging out brightly colored garments. She was soon lost in the furrow of dust the truck raised.

- Rudolfo Anaya, //Bless Me, Ultima//

__ Discuss __ :

1. List the words that provide specific detail and contribute to the power of the passage.

2.Contrast the third sentence with the following sentence. Explain the difference in impact between the two:


 * // We passed Rosie’s house and saw a girl hanging out the clothes. //**

__** Detail 6 **__ //Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

He went on till he came to the first milestone, which stood in the bank, half-way up a steep hill. He rested his basket on the top of the stone, placed his elbows on it, and gave way to a convulsive twitch, which was worse than a sob, because it was so hard and dry.

- Thomas Hardy, //The// //Mayor of Casterbridge//

__ Discuss __ :

1. How do the details in this passage prepare you for the **//convulsive twitch//** at the end of the passage?

2. This passage does not describe the character’s face at all. What effect does this lackof detail have on the reader?


 * __ Detail 7 __** //Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

The dog stood up and growled like a lion, stiff-standing hackles, teeth uncovered as he lashed up his fury for the charge. Tea Cake split the water like an otter, opening the knife as he dived. The dog raced down the back-bone of the cow to the attack and Janie screamed and slipped far back on the tail of the cow, just out of reach of the dog’s angry jaws/

- Zora Neale Hurston, //Their Eyes Were Watching God//

__ Discuss __ :

1. Which details reveal that the dog has rabies? How do these details affect the reader?

2. Contrast the details used to describe Tea Cake (the mail protagonist) and Janie (th__e__ female protagonist). What do these details reveal about the author’s attitude toward these two characters?

__** Detail 8 **__ //Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

MRS. VENABLE:…and the sand all alive, all alive, as the hatched sea-turtles made their dash for the sea, while the birds hovered and swooped to attack and hovered and – swooped to attack! They were diving down on the hatched sea-turtles, turning them over to expose their soft undersides, tearing the undersides open and rending and eating their flesh.

- Tennessee Williams, //Suddenly Last Summer//

__ Discuss __ :

1. Williams repeats detail in three places. Note the incidents of repetition and discuss whether the repetition enhances or detracts from the overall effect of the passage.

2. What is Mrs. Venable’s attitude toward the scene she describes? Which specific details reveal his attitude?

__** Detail 9 **__ //Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

If my mother was in a singing mood, it wasn’t so bad. She would sing about hard times, bad times, and somebody-done-gone-and-left-me times. But her voice was so sweet and her singing-eyes so melty I found myself longing for those hard times, yearning to be grown without “a thin di-I-me to my name.” I looked forward to the delicious time when “my man” would leave me, when I would “hate to see that evening sun go down…” ‘cause then I would know “my man has left this town.” Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother’s voice took all of the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet. - Toni Morrison, //The// //Bluest Eye//

__ Discuss __ :

1. What are the parts of the passage in quotes? What do the quoted details add to the passage?

2. Which details in the passage contribute to the conclusion that pain is sweet? Fill in the chart below to show how Morrison sets up this oxymoron.


 * “Sweet” Details || “Pain” Details ||

__** Detail 10 **__ //Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

About suffering they were never wrong. The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

- W.H. Auden, “Musee de Beaux Arts”

__ Discuss __ :

1. Suffering is a general term. What is a general term that sums up the detail in line 4?

__2__.Compare line 4 with the line below. Why is Auden’s line more effective?


 * // While someone else is not suffering; //**

__** Detail 11 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Under the hard, tough cloak of the struggle for existence in which money and enormous white refrigerators and shining, massive, brutally-fast cars and fine, expensive clothing had ostensibly overwhelmed the qualities of men that were good and gentle and just, there still beat a heart of kindness and patience and forgiveness.

- John Okada, //No-No Boy//

__ Discuss __ : 1. What does Okada’s choice of detail reveal about his attitude toward money?

2. How would the elimination of **//and enormous white refrigerators and shining, massive//** **// brutally-fast cars and fine, expensive clothing //** modify the meaning and effectiveness of the sentence ? Fill in the chart below with details that support your understanding of Okada’s attitude toward money.


 * Money Details || People Details ||

__** Detail 12 **__ //Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

I rounded the hut and saw a man’s dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with his trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth. This was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony.

- George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant”

__ Discuss __ :

1. What is the author’s attitude toward the coolie’s death? What details reveal this attitude?

2. Examine the last sentence of this paragraph. How would it have affected the overall impacthad Orwell written, **//his eyes wide open, his teeth bared and grinning//**…?

__** Detail 13 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

Until I returned to Cuba, I never realized how many blues exist. The aquamarines near the shoreline, the azures of deeper waters, the eggshell blue beneath my grandmother’s eyes, the fragile indigos tracking her hands. There’s a blue too, in the curves of the palms, and the edges of the words we speak, a blue tinge to the sand and the seashells and the plumb gulls on the beach. The mole Abuela’s mouth is also blue, a vanishing blue.

- Cristina Garcia, //Dreaming in Cuban//

__ Discuss __ :

1. The narrator details of blues of the landscape and the blues of her grandmother (Abuela). What connection is revealed by this juxtaposition of images?

2. Why is the last blue is the passage a **//vanishing blue//**?

__** Detail 14 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just an approach of nightfall, or to come to some straggling village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom; and then, after inquiring for the best entertainment that the place affords, to “take one’s ease at one’s inn”! - William Hazitt, “On Going a Journey”

__ Discuss __ :

1. What details support the generalization, **//how fine it is//**?

2. What feelings are evoked by the details of the town (old, walled, turreted)? How does this selection of detail communicate Hazlitt’s attitude toward the town?


 * __ Detail 15 __**//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

She was wearing her usual at-home vesture….It consisted mostly of a hoary midnight blue Japanese kimono. She almost invariably wore it through the apartment during the day. With its many occultish-looking folds, it also served as the repository for the paraphernalia of a very heavy cigarette smoker and an amateur handyman; two oversized pockets had been added at the hips, and they usually contained two or three packs of cigarettes, several match folders, a screwdriver, a claw-end hammer, a Boy Scout knife that had once belonged to one of her sons, and an enamel faucet handle or two, plus an assortment of screws, nails, hinges, and ball-bearing casters – all of which tended to make Mrs. Glass chink faintly as she moved about in her apartment.

- J.D. Salinger, //Franny and Zooey//

__ Discuss __ : 1. What does the detail in the passage reveal about Mrs. Glass’ character? In other words, how does the detail give you a picture of her looks and insight into her character?

2. How would the meaning of the fourth sentence (With its many…) be different without the detail that follows the semicolon?


 * __ Detail 16 __**//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

In fact right behind her Gabriel could be seen piloting Freddy Malins across the landing. The latter, a young man of about forty, was of Gabriel’s size and build, with very round shoulders. His face was fleshy and pallid, touched with colour only at the thick hanging lobes of his ears and at the wide wings of his nose. He had coarse feathers, a blunt nose, a convex and receding brow, tumid and protruded lips. His heavy-lidded eyes and the disorder of his scanty hair made him look sleepy.

- James Joyce, “The Dead” __ Discuss __ :

1. Joyce uses many specific details to describe Freddy’s physical appearance. List these specific details, and for each, indicate whether the detail is objective (making an observation ) or evaluative (making a judgment).

2. What is Joyce’s attitude toward Freddy? Which specific details reveal this attitude?


 * __ Detail 17 __**//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

We went upstairs, through period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender silk and vivid with new flowers, through dressing-rooms and poolrooms, and bathrooms, with sunken baths – intruding into one chamber where a disheveled man in pajamas was doing liver exercises on the floor.

// __--__ // F. Scott Fitzgerald, //The Great Gatsby//

__ Discuss __ :

1. List three general adjectives that you could use to describe this house. Explain the connection between the detail in Fitzgerald’s sentence and the adjectives you have chosen.

2. How does the **//disheveled man in pajamas…doing liver exercises//** on the floor help create the mood and atmosphere of the house?

__** Detail 18 **__//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

My grandfather took me to the back of his house, to a room that my mother said was private, that she had yanked me away from when I once had tried to look. It had a bead curtain at the door and we passed through it and the beads rustled like tall grass. The room was dim, lit by candles, and it smelled of incense, and my grandfather stood me before a little shrine with flowers and a smoking incense bowl and two brass candlesticks and between them a photo of a man in a Chinese mandarin hat. - Robert Olen Butler, “ Mr. Green”

__ Discuss __ :

1. The first sentence states that the room is private. The author then uses specific detail to illustrate the privacy. How does this detail define and focus the privacy of the room?

2. Most of the passage is filled with detail describing the room. Which detail do you think adds most to the impact of the passage? Why?


 * __ Detail 19 __**//Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night, Ya-honk he has, and sounds it down to me like an invitation, The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listened close, Find its purpose and place up there toward the winery sky.

The sharp-hoof’d moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog, The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats, The brood of the turkey-hen and she with her half-spread wings, I see in them and myself the same old law.

- Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

__ Discuss __ :

1. What is the conclusion of the last line? Which details support this conclusion?

2. The animals in these stanzas are specific and detailed. In contrast, the ambience (**//the//** **// cool night, the wintry sky //** ) is more general. What attitude is revealed by this difference?

__** Detail 20 **__ //Voice Lessons// / Nancy Dean

The day has been hot and sultry. The sun has set behind great banks of clouds which are piling up on the northwestern horizon. Now that the light is beginning to fade, the great masses of cumulus, which are slowly gathering and rising higher toward the zenith, are lit up by pale flashes of sheet-lightning.

- W.J. Holland, “Sugaring for Moths,” //The Moth Book//

__ Discuss __ :

1. What are the details that contribute to the reader’s mental picture of the clouds? List these details and discuss the significance of the order of their presentation.

2. What is sheet-lightning? Why is it more effective to say sheet-lightning than lightning?