Sunday, October 19, 2014

Imagery through words

If you haven’t read a Geraldine Brooks novel, I highly recommend “Years of Wonder.” The story takes place in 1666 in an isolated mountain village in England that becomes infected with the plague from a bolt of cloth. In my opinion, Geraldine is a terrific writer who brings imagery to her writing through descriptive details; she shows her readers the images she wants to portray. It was hard to choose just one paragraph out of this book because the entire novel is full of this style of writing. The paragraph below describes a servant’s response to her mistress when she becomes infected with the plague.   

“I bathed her hectic face with linens steeped in mint water and studied her delicate skin, waiting and dreading the moment when her general flush would blossom into the red-black petals of the Plague’s roses. Her hair, so fine, clung damply to her forehead like silvery lace. To me, she had become so many things. So many things a servant has no right or reason to image that the person they serve will be. Because of her, I had known the warmth of a motherly concern—the concern that my own mother had not lived to show me. Because of her, I had had a teacher and was not ignorant and unlettered still.”

I love the vivid imagery used in this paragraph. It brings so many emotions to life. 

This week’s grammatical error comes from the Weber School District website. The first sentence is identical to the first sentence in the second paragraph. 









1 comment:

  1. Ugh! Your editing mistake of the week is one I see quite often at my work. Although I don't know the exact situation for this mistake, I regularly see people copy and paste titles and sections and end up repeating the tiles or descriptions. Such a great reminder to always slow down and re-read everything before submission.

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