\u201cOnce upon a time Elsie had been enraptured by the silken petals that fell from Ambrose\u2019s Wetlandish-affected lips. Now she wished that he would either shut up or talk simply and plainly with her again\u201d (108).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In this passage, strain is shown in the marriage between Elsie and Ambrose. Not unlike the other examples of marriage in Cereus Blooms at Night, both Elsie and Ambrose have grown apart and find each other as merely existing in the same space (for this marriage specifically only once a month). These two sentences accentuate the tension in the marriage. With words and strings of words like \u201cOnce upon a time,\u201d \u201cenraptured,\u201d \u201csilken petals that fell from Ambrose\u2019s\u2026lips\u201d a soft legato tone is set. It reflects Elsie\u2019s genuine intrigue in Ambrose\u2019s lexicon in the start of their relationship. The tone immediately changes in the next sentence. The tone shifts to blunt, reflecting the end of Elsie\u2019s patience with Ambrose\u2019s way of speaking. This shift is indicated in the words (i.e. shut up) but is strengthened by a shift in syllables. Standing alone the second sentence would seem simple, not frustrated, for it only holds words that have 1 or 2 syllables. In the first sentence, the legato tone is set with the variation of syllables (the mapping out of the syllables is 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 3 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 3 3-3 2). The first sentence has words with 3 syllables sprinkled in. The sudden removal of these more \u201ccomplex\u201d words creates the tenser tone. This syllable shift sets the foundation for the tension of Elsie and Ambrose\u2019s marriage that is expressed in the formation of the two sentences above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cOnce upon a time Elsie had been enraptured by the silken petals that fell from Ambrose\u2019s Wetlandish-affected lips. Now she wished that he would either shut up or talk simply and plainly with her again\u201d (108). In this passage, strain is shown in the marriage between Elsie and Ambrose. Not unlike the other examples … Continue reading The Tone of Syllables<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2595,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93618],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}