One of the 5 key elements that we will discuss in every novel we read this semester is the use of dialogue. Select a passage from A Lesson Before Dying or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that shows the writer's ability to create realistic and effective dialogue. Explain why you enjoyed this moment in the novel. (The deadline to post a response to this question is midnight August 4, 2010).
Friday, July 30, 2010
The Power of Dialogue
One of the 5 key elements that we will discuss in every novel we read this semester is the use of dialogue. Select a passage from A Lesson Before Dying or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that shows the writer's ability to create realistic and effective dialogue. Explain why you enjoyed this moment in the novel. (The deadline to post a response to this question is midnight August 4, 2010).
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I understand if it is too late, but I decided to submit this anyway.
Blakeney McKnight
August 4, 2010
Extra Credit
Ernest J. Gaines effectively uses dialogue to convey emotion throughout the novel, A Lesson Before Dying. In the scene at the courthouse when Miss Emma, Tante Lou, Reverend Ambrose, and Grant come to visit Jefferson in the dayroom, Grant has a powerful and deeply moving conversation with Jefferson. He uses analogy to talk about how being a man is similar to how a neighbor makes a slingshot handle. Like the handle that begins as a piece of scrap wood, people similarly have to choose to make themselves into something if they ever wish to amount to anything. Grant explains that similarly as the Earth is filled with more driftwood than handles that there are more people who never amount to anything in life than those who stand alone. He explains to Jefferson that white men expect him to be common driftwood for the remainder of his life, but that only he held the power to decide whether he wanted to be cleaned and shaved into this handle of a man. He pleads that Jefferson become this man for not only his loved ones- Miss Emma, Reverend Ambrose, and the remainder of the plantation- but for himself. Grant reveals that even though he has been educated, he too is still driftwood, and calls Jefferson to prove all who doubt him wrong and stand up a man amidst the driftwood. This passage is so powerful because it reveals that Grant’s actions are fueled not only by his aunt’s wishes or pity, but also by his own self loathing.
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