THE DESCRIPTION ESSAY

This type of essay describes people and places at rest. It is more difficult to write because the order in which your ideas follow one another is determined not by the sequence of events, but rather by certain qualities of your ideas and the logical connection between them. You must try to give your essay a clear and logical shape, whether you start from the general and work towards the particular (as is more usual) or vice versa. Here is an example of a descriptive essay.

First Snow

The first fall of snow is not only an event but it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up to find yourself in another, quite different, and if this is not enchant­ment, then where is it to be found? The very stealth, the eerie quietness, of the thing makes it more magical. If all the snow fell at once in one shattering crash, awakening us in the middle of the night, the event would be robbed of its wonder. But it flutters down, soundlessly, hour after hour while we are asleep. Outside the closed curtains of the bedroom a vast transformation scene is taking place, just as if a myriad elves and brownies were at work, and we turn and yawn and stretch and know nothing about it. And then, what an extraordinary change it is! It is as if the house you are in had been dropped down in another continent. Even the inside, which has not been touched, seems different, every, room appearing smaller and cosier, just as if some power were trying to turn it into a woodcutter's hut or a snug log-cabin. Outside, where the garden was yesterday, there is now a white and glistening level, and the village beyond is no longer your own familiar cluster of roofs but a village in an old German fairy-tale. You would not be surprised to learn that all the people there, the spectacled postmistress, the cobbler, the retired schoolmaster, and the rest, had suffered a change too and had become queer elvish beings, purveyors of invisible caps and magic shoes. You yourselves do not feel quite the same people you were yesterday. How could you when so much has been changed? There is a curious stir, a little shiver of excitement, troubling the house, not unlike the feeling there is abroad when a journey has to be made. The children, of course, are all excitement, but even the adults hang about and talk to one another longer than usual before settling down to the day's work. Nobody can resist the windows. It is like being on board ship.

(from First Snow by J. B. Priestley)

Notes

brownie—(Scottish folklore) benevolent shaggy goblin (haunting houses and doing household work secretly

COMMENTS

Most people would agree that this extract makes pleasant and interesting reading. Let us try to see why. We shall con­sider the subject matter first.

The genre essay differs from the genre short story in that it is reflective or descriptive rather than narrative, personal rather than detached. The work from which this extract is taken is thus typical of the kind of writing to which the term "essay" is applied, being an account of the author's personal response to the first snow-fall of the year. Why should such a seemingly mundane subject attract us so? The answer is — because it is not mundane. It is ordinary in the sense that we all know what the first snow-fall is like, but it really does give us the feeling of excitement and strangeness which Priestley describes. So we know that he is an honest writer, and we are grateful to him not only because he reminds us of one of life's better moments, but also because he reminds us that we, like him, are able to respond to the snow-fall, that we, too, are sensitive people. By implication he is telling us that we have experiences which are worth writing about, even if we ourselves do not have the time or talent to write about them.

The subject-matter, then, is inherently appealing. Now let us consider the style — that is, the choice of words and con­structions which convince us that the writer observed accurately and wrote honestly, and which hold our interest to the end. If we read the passage through attentively we shall find that the sentences are pleasantly and effectively varied in length and structure. Any kind of subject matter requires this variety of rhythm in order to avoid monotony: Variety is a kind of courtesy to the reader. But of course each variation in sentence length or structure must not only provide a contrast to what went before — it must also be in harmony with the meaning expressed.

The following example will illustrate how important it is to choose the right structure. Instead of saying "... if this is not enchantment, then where is it to be found?" we could say:

a) and this is enchantment, or:

b) if this is not enchantment, then I don't know what is.

The meaning would be more or less the same (i. e. these are acceptable paraphrases) but the effect would be spoiled.

a) is much too abrupt. A bunch of flowers has to be present­ed with a smile and a few friendly words; it's no good throwing them on the table without a word as you walk in. Priestley knew that he had to devote more than four words to the intro­duction of the idea of enchantment; he had to give the reader time to absorb and appreciate the idea.

b) is unsuitable not only because it is a cliché but also because it is a cliché used by annoyed or impatient speakers who are convinced that they themselves are right and someone else is wrong. The associations of this construction would spoil the quite gentle mood.

Here is another example: "And then what an extraordinary change it is!" This is an exclamatory sentence and therefore emphatic. Its emphatic force is brought out to the full by its position between two longer sentences. It may seem superfluous to say that only ideas which need to be stressed should be stressed, but the inexperienced writer may well be tempted to overuse emphatic constructions. In this particular sentence the emphatic form is perfectly appropriate to the content, since the idea expressed is the main idea of the whole passage.

Now let us turn to the writer's use of imagery. Most of the images are taken from fairy-tales and so help to convey the idea of enchantment and magic. They take the reader's memory back to the stories he heard as a child, back to a time when the world seemed stranger and more exciting than it does now. But these fairy-tale images are not swans or princesses, they are elves and goblins, mysterious little people but at the same time funny. The writer is obviously attracted to these little folk and we feel that he has a good sense of humour. This is con­firmed by his words "... if all the snow fell at once in one shattering crash ...". This thought must have made him smile when it came to him and we, too, are likely to grin as we imagine this massive bump in the night.

Such touches as this strengthen our impression of the writ­er as an attractive and balanced human being. His sense of humour keeps his writing in touch with the robust everybody world where people joke and laugh and don't take life too seriously. All this talk of enchantment never threatens to be­come sentimental or too abstract. Abstract nouns (excitement, feeling, stir, etc.) are used with restraint, and the excitement is conveyed by concrete images — a log cabin, a German village, a woodcutter's hut, a ship.

Exercise 2. Write a short essay of not more than 500 words on the same or a related subject, that is, either describing the first snow-fall and the effect it has on you, or another event in nature which strikes you as mysterious or poetic, for example: a thunderstorm in May; after a summer shower; the thaw sets in.

Do not be afraid to borrow words, expressions and structures from the passage quoted above (though I’d still prefer you to use your own inspiration and thesaurus), but make sure they are used only in the appropriate places and that they blend well with the rest of your essay. If an idea in the text strikes a chord in you, if you feel you can write something of your own in the same vein, by all means use it.

More essay subjects.

1. An afternoon by the river. 2. Watching city traffic. 3. In the park on a Sunday afternoon.

4. Sunrise in the countryside. 5. In the mountains. 6. The underground during the rush hours. 7. A heavy shower in town. 8. A busy shopping centre.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 839