Patterns and Contrasts in Vocabulary<\/p>\n
\u201cThe doctor stumbled upstairs by the fire light and met the awestruck look of the neighbour, which at once told him the state of things. The room was till, as he, with habitual tiptoe step, approached the poor frail body, that nothing now could more disturb. Her daughter knelt by the bed-side, her face buried in the clothes, which were almost crammed into her mouth, to keep down the choking sobs. The husband stood like one stupefied. The doctor questioned the neighbour in whispers, and then approaching Barton, said, “You must go down stairs. This is a great shock, but bear it like a man. Go down.” He went mechanically and sat down on the first chair. He had no hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
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In the passage before my focused reading, John Barton frantically calls for the doctor to help his sick wife who is dying fast. The doctor doesn\u2019t answer right away, so the tone of the passage before and during my selected paragraph is very chaotic, clumsy, and frantic as john is racing against time to help his wife. The frantic nature in which Gaskell writes about the movement of the people in the scene is important in the portrayal of sadness and drama in the scene. Gaskell uses a variety of words like \u201cstumbled, mechanically and tiptoe,\u201d to describe the movement of John, and the doctor in the scene. The contrast of the franticness at the beginning of the scene when the doctor is clumsily stumbling up the steps to help John\u2019s wife, to the end of the paragraph when John sees his dead wife and \u201cwalks mechanically\u201d emotionless, like a robot downstairs to grieve. I also made note of a series of repetitions within this passage, particularly with the word \u201cdown.\u201d The somber tone, setting, and reality of the scene seems to link well with the word \u201cdown\u201d and how it is used to describe the daughter trying to \u201ckeep down the choking sobs\u201d by cramming her mother\u2019s clothes in her mouth. In addition to this, the doctor urges John to go downstairs and \u201cbear it like a man\u201d away from the daughter and his deceased wife. The word down is used to describe the grief in this scene and is also attached to death in the burial sense, as one moves the body down into the earth. Lastly, I feel the word \u201cdown\u201d can be understood as feeling, (\u201cI\u2019m feeling down in the dumps.\u201d) What I am really trying to say here is that I think there are several sections of lines that work in tandem with one another, particularly from the beginning of the passage where there is still hope that Mary\u2019s life can be saved, to the end of the paragraph when she dies, grief sets in, and John walks away \u201cmechanically\u201d and emotionless to sit down and grieve downstairs by himself. The ending of the passage gives an image of John sitting downstairs alone with \u201cno hope.\u201d Overall, Gaskell\u2019s use of different words to describe the movement of characters in the scene as they try and help Mary, and the use of the word \u201cdown\u201d to describe the grieving process after her death, enhances the emotion and sadness in this passage from chapter 3 and sets the tone for the rest of the section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Patterns and Contrasts in Vocabulary Passage: Chapter 3, Pg. 20 \u201cThe doctor stumbled upstairs by the fire light and met the awestruck look of the neighbour, which at once told him the state of things. The room was till, as he, with habitual tiptoe step, approached the poor frail body, that nothing now could more … Continue reading Patterns and Contrasts in Vocabulary<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4791,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344620],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4791"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}