Expressive means and Stylistic devices
The story under analysis
isn't very big, but it is overrun with expressive means and stylistic devices.
The
beginning of the story starts with the emphatic construction:
"That it what Trysdale was doing", which emphasizes the relation of
the time. In the first paragraph is capitalization - Time. The
author shows us a importance of it.
The
story is full of epithets, most of which are related to Trysdale: a
swift, scarifying retrospect; incontinent admirers; his large
pride hurt vanity; or a singular-looking green plant, i.e. cactus.
Metaphors are employed to show how unfeeling he was: he saw all the garbs of
pretence and egoism; the garment of his soul; she insisted on the placing him
upon a pedestal; and she became: turned to snow and ice.
Other
lexical stylistic devices such as:
- simile:
white favors like stars upon their coats shone, he had absorbed the
oblation as a desert drinks the rain;
- oxymoron:
sullen exultation;
- hyperbole:
for the thousandth time, supernatural number are
emloyed in the text.
To emphasize the whole
utterance the writer uses enumeration in his story several
times: his own innermost, unmitigated, arid unbedecked himself; that swift,
limpid, upward look.
To impart imagery the
author uses personification: garbs of pretence now turn to
rags of folly; the garment of his soul must have appeared sorry and threadbare;
rain that can coax from it no promice of blossom or fruit; his large pride and
hurt vanity kept him from seeking her; the leaves are reaching out and
beckoning you.
To show the state of
pondering the problem we come across:
- rhetorical questions: Vanity or conceit?;
Why had he ended thus?; Where were his fault?; Who had been to blame?
- aposiopesis: But
why...; If...
- inversion: Indeed, his conceit had
crumbled. The tide had so suddenly turned. Without protest, he allowed her to
twine about his brow this spurious bay of Spanish scholarship. How glad. how
shy, how tremulous she was.
- separation: There had been no
quarell between them, nothing.
- detachement: He
could not, now, for the pain of it, allow his mind to dwell upon
the memory. The next day he waited, impatient, in
his rooms for the word.
- parallelism:
He could have sworn, and he could swear now.
Trough out the story we
collide with the exclamations: But, alas! How glad. how shy,
how tremulous she was! Come now! Hallo!
To show the intensity of
the emotions the author uses gradation: she looked at him,
breathless, wondering, eager.
Polysyndeton is used to show
the Trysdale's advantages: high attributes and excellencies and talents.
Incomplete sentences, such as: Know the
species? Know any Spanish, Trysdale?, and elliptical sentence, such
as: A present from a friend can be seen in the dialogue between Trysdale and
Carruthers.
