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Example research essay topic: Tone Of Voice One To One - 2,225 words

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... the story is so complicated, this so-called one-to-one relationship of the personification to the idea is not perfectly consistent. Nevertheless, appears to be radically inconsistent-when a character is sometimes strictly and merely allegorical. ("Well, it seems, while they was cryin', Doc Stair came along and he asked what was the matter, but Mrs. Kendall was stubborn and wouldn't tell him, but the kids told him and he insisted on takin' them and their mother in the show. Jim found this out afterwards and it was one reason why he had it in for Doc Stair. "), and sometimes not ("He said Paul had asked him what he thought of the joke and the Doc had told him that anybody that would do a thing like that ought not to be let live. ") In this most complex allegory, there is something more than a one-to-one relationship, because the story operates on several levels. Doc as the Coroner represents authority in one aspect as well as the abstraction Chastity.

Julie provides a one-to-three relationship of image and idea in certain passages. (" She's been away to school and Chicago and New York and different places and they ain't no subject she can't talk on. I guess it was what they call love at first sight. But it wasn't fifty-fifty. This young fella was the slickest lookin' fella she'd ever seen in this town and she went wild over him.

Poor Julie She didn't show up on Main street for a long, long time afterward." ) This indicates that Lardner has drawn from a medieval tradition of interpreting events upon three levels at once-the literal, the moral, and the analogical. In Haircut, the form of a Doctor and Coroner can literally represent the human spirits, but also signify politically the legitimate imperial power, morally the virtue of justice, and mystically the healer, and sometimes the heavenly state of souls which are unified in their beatitude. The allegory becomes so complicated in this instance that it is very close to what is commonly called symbolism. Moreover, in fact many allegorical works, like Haircut, include elements that must be considered symbolic according to even the most rigorous definition. There are several ways Lardner has defined symbolism so as to distinguish it from allegory. In his allegory, the meanings of the tale are meant to be clear, almost "Karmic" whereas his symbolism provides overtones (Docs office upstairs, totally unrealistic for a Doctor) and suggests a meaning rather than keys; the characters in this allegory are cardboard-flat, albeit "Stock, the Butcher, the Baker, the candlestick maker but in this symbolic work Lardner allows us to look behind the stock-cardboard characters, who in their own right seem to be complicated people.

IMAGERY More specifically, Metaphor, in this narrow sense; as Sophocles tells us that "Emotion is like the waves of the sea, " that is a simile, a figure that explicitly compares two terms instead of equating them. Ordinarily a simile uses the word "as" or the word "like. " ("You'd of thought it was a reserved seat like they have sometimes in a theater."So I'd say, "No, Jim, but you look like you'd been drinkin's ome thin' of that kind or somethin' worse. "). (" Well, he's got an Adam's apple that looks more like a muskmelon. ") Lardner speaks to us in buried or submerged metaphors of space, about moving ahead, or looking backward, Jim's loss of his job, falling into debt and rising above difficulties but he never rises above his debt or fall below his troubles. Lardner uses an equally familiar form called a "Metonymy", making a name or thing represent another thing or person: (" Jim was a Card") another more sophisticate example might be: the critic who writes that Lardner was influenced by Spenser, means that Lardner was influenced by his reading of Spenser's poetry, not directly by the man himself. Themes are not apparent from a casual reading. Thus, although it is perfectly obvious that Lardner uses the metaphor of clothing as a unifying device, expanding on the metaphor to include certain real clothes which he regards as symbolic, it is not so obvious what the recurrent dramatic images of clothing in Haircut reveal: that the allegoric symbol of Christianity is falsely robed in his ill-fitting garments therefore they must be tailored to gain the respect of his flock, or that he cannot at last successfully disguise or symbolically alter his naked humanity. Lardner flirts with dangers in the method that focuses attention upon imagery, especially the imagery of metaphor.

The greatest of these is that one will distort the meaning, of this short story by failing to observe how the implications of metaphorical language are contained and controlled by the plot, and by the characterization. Is it Doc, who uses the images of animal lust-and by all the elements of the whole structure? ("Doc had told him that anybody that would do a thing like that ought not to be let live. " ( ( (Protecting his "Pride/Harem") ) ) ) (" He finally seen he wasn't gettin' no wheres with his usual line so he decided to try the tough stuff. He went right up to her house one even' and when she opened the door lie forced his way in and grabbed her. ") TONE Here we are touching on a larger subject, one that involves all the elements of style, including diction, imagery, syntax, sound, and rhythm. This is the subject of tone. Although the word is now and then used loosely as if it were a synonym for atmosphere or mood, the usual and more precise sense of literary tone is the expression of attitude, the equivalent in written language of a tone of voice. If we ask in what voice, with what intonation, a lyric or a scene or a passage from a story should be read aloud to communicate the speaker's or the character's or the narrator's attitude, then we are asking, about the tone.

I have a tendency on commenting on this term to want to limit it, so as to imply only a speaker's attitude toward his auditor. But when we read this unique narrative prose, the storyteller must be considered to speak to us as auditors; and in the language of many narrators, at least, there seems to be no definite feeling toward the reader, the "listener. " To be sure, older novelists, like Lardner, address the reader, and assume the level of the "Listener" without cajoling, condescending, sympathizing, or otherwise showing an attitude toward us. It may be more useful then, to broaden the definition, and to think of literary tone as the expression of attitude toward objects specified or implied. One of the objects attended to indeed, in this narrative work, is another character whom the speaker addresses (The reader in the chair). The tone here is neither defiant nor despairing, but a calmly serious one, serious and yet not solemn, friendly but not too familiar. Whitey's tone is established by diction.

Lardner's literary tone, like a tone of voice, is easy, or modest, ("You " re a newcomer, ain't you? I thought I hadn't seen -you round before. I hope you like it good enough to stay. As I say, we ain't no New York City or Chicago, but we have pretty good times. ") detached of sentiment, straightforward, and ironic. (" Not as good, though, since Jim Kendall got killed"). There are even varieties of tones within the work, as the scenes and speakers change. But the different tones are not well distinguished between the shifting tones of characters's pieces and the over-all or controlling tone, which is "Whiteys" easy-going, small town gossipy nature.

At times the narrator's tone in Haircut shifts too far or too often, however, the result can easily be a little confusing, even incoherence. Haircut suffers from this failure, because at certain points the main characters and the main actions of the story are treated lightly, with almost a comic effect, and again at other times these people and their actions are described in highly serious language. (.".. him and Hod Meyers used to keep this town in an uproar. I bet they was more laughing' done here than any town its size in America.

Jim was comical, and Hod, ' was pretty near a match for him. Since Jim's gone, Hod tries to hold his end up just the same as ever, but it's tough goin' when you ain't got nobody to kind of work with. They used to be plenty fun in here Saturdays. This place is jam-packed Saturdays, from four o'clock on. Jim and Hod would show up right after their supper, round six o'clock. Jim would set himself down in that big chair nearest the blue spittoon.

Whoever had been section' in that chair, why they'd get up when Jim come in and give it to him. You'd of thought it was a reserved seat like they have sometimes in a theater. "For instance, they'd be a sign, "Henry Smith, Dry Goods" well, Jim would write down the name and the name of the town and when he got to wherever he was goin' he'd mail back a postal card to Henry Smith at Benton and not sign no name to it, but he'd write on the card, well, somethin", like "Ask your wife about that book agent that spent the afternoon last week, " or "Ask your missus who kept her from gettin' lonesome the last time you was in Carterville. " And he'd sign the card, "A Friend. " Of course, he never knew what really come of none of these jokes, but he could picture what probably happened and that was enough. "I suppose he was protein' to get Paul out in the boat and play some joke on him, like pushing' him in the water. Anyways, he said Paul could go. ") Probably the most difficult tone Lardner deals with is the ironic. Lardner is careful not to confuse the reader with irony of event, or dramatic irony, although both means of sharply contrasting appearance with actuality are used.

Dramatic irony occurred when his characters on the page acted upon assumptions so far opposite to the truth that there is a striking discrepancy between what they believed and what the reader or the audience recognizes to be the fact. ("I said it bad been a kind of a raw thing, but Jim just couldn't resist no kind of a joke, no matter how raw. I said I thought he was all right at heart, but just bubbling' over with mischief. Doc turned and walked out. At noon, he got a phone call from old John Scott. The lake where Jim and Paul had went shootin' is on john's place. Paul had come runnin' up to the house a few minutes before and said they'd been an accident.

Jim had shot a few ducks and then give the gun to Paul and told him to try his luck. Paul hadn't never handled a gun and he was nervous. He was shakin's o hard that he couldn't control the gun. He let fire and Jim sunk back in the boat, dead. Doc Stair, bein' the coroner, jumped in Frank Abbott's Flivver and rushed out to Scott's farm. Paul and old John was down on the shore of the lake.

Paul had rowed the boat to shore, but they'd left the body in it, waitin' for Doc to come. Doc examined the body and said they might as well fetch it back to town. They was no use leavin' it there or callin' a jury, as it was a plain case of accidental shootin'. Personally I wouldn't never leave a person shoot a gun in the same boat I was in unless I was sure they knew somethin' about guns. Jim was a sucker to leave a new beginner have his gun, let alone a half-wit. It probably served Jim right, what he got.

But still we miss him round here. He certainly was a card. The term irony has come more recently to take on rather larger meanings than any yet mentioned. A philosophical sense of so-called Cosmic irony pervades the work. Nevertheless, perhaps this is not strictly a matter of tone so much as one of belief.

This sense of irony, which is really an extension of the romantic irony in Haircut, does not oppose what is apparent to what is real, but a partial reality to another partial reality; the ironic tone, according to Lardner's usage, is a refusal of complete commitment to any single view of things as too simple. We return once again to the theme of choice. This work of fiction as a complex but coherent form determined by a series of choices, unconventional choices (especially in point of view vs. omni cense) made by Lardner in the process of composition. In truth, the author is always omniscient. Nevertheless, Lardner has chosen to tell the story through a narrator who is not omniscient, but thinks he is.

In addition, this choice, as much as any other made by Lardner, has formal, moral, and philosophical significance. It is not "merely a matter of technique" (whatever that might mean) but part of the meaning of fiction. Bibliography:


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Research essay sample on Tone Of Voice One To One

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