a rose for emily(18)

内容摘要

Besides long complex sentences, the author also uses short simple sentences especially in dialogues to make the conversation more vividly and to show the character‘s personality as well. What is worth noticing is that all the sentences spoken by Emily are rather simple and short. It not only reflects Emily‘s reluctance to communicate with others, but also show her pride and inviolability. Take the dialogue between Emily and the druggist for example. "I want some poison," she said./"Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recom——"/"I want the best you have. I don't care what kind."/The druggist named several. "They'll kill anything up to an elephant. But what you want is——"/"Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?"/"Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want——"/"I want arsenic." In this short dialogue, Emily uses short sentences with the beginning of ―I‖ just as making orders, and she interrupts the druggist three times in such a short conversation. All of these show Emily‘s pride and strong-determination. In addition, Emily‘s sentence is simple but grammatically correct compared with the druggist‘s fragments, which shows Emily‘s good education and the druggist‘s nervousness. From it we can see the druggist is totally defeated by Emily. Similar examples can be found in the conversation between Emily and the city authorities who are trying to persuade Emily to pay taxes.

[1]

Sometimes, the author uses long sentences combined with short sentences intentionally to make some special effects, for example, irony or arousing readers‘ attention. In the sentence ―When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them‖, the short sentence ―She would not listen to them‖ follows the previous long sentence to form a strong contrast in syntactic structure making ironic effect. Emily tends to resist the development of the society with her own pride and stubbornness. She even wants to put the clock back. How ridiculous! However, we cannot help admiring her strong determination to cling to the old tradition at the same time. This short sentence gives us such complicated feelings while reading the story. In the Chapter 5 of the story, the short simple sentence ―The

百度搜索“77cn”或“免费范文网”即可找到本站免费阅读全部范文。收藏本站方便下次阅读，免费范文网，提供经典小说教育文库a rose for emily(18)在线全文阅读。