Question

I NEED HELP analyzing this piece: diction, tone, type of sentence for each (simple, compound, complex, etc.?


I need to do a style analysis of five different paragraphs, including:diction, tone, and syntax. I need to indicate what each sentence is: simple, compound, complex, complex-compound. I just need help with this one to get started.

English-literature start out in little cubicles known as carrels, in the stacks of the university libraries, with nothing but a couple of metal Klampiton shelves of books to sustain them, sitting there making scholarly anologies-detecting signs of Rabelais in Sterne, signs of Ovid in Pound, signs of Dickens in Dostoevsky, signs of nineteenth-century flower symbolism in Melville, signs of Schlegelianism in Coleridge, signs of the oral-narrative use of the conjunctive in Hemingway, signs, analogies, insights-always insights!-golden desideratum!-hunched over in silence with only the far-off sound of Maggie, a Girl of the Stacks, a townie who put books back on the shelves-now she is all right, a little lower-class-puffy in the nose, you understand, but...-only the sound of her to inject some stray, sport thought into this intensely isolated regimen. In effect, the graduate-school scholar settles down at an early age, when the sap is still rising, to a life of little cubicles, little money, little journals in which his insights, if he is extremely diligent, may someday be recorded.

Answer 1

Okay, first of all, read this paragraph aloud. Then tell me where the first sentence ends.

I'll wait.

Answer 2

Oh wow! I guess I never really noticed that. I can't put my finger on the tone of the piece though. I can't think of a word to really describe it.

Answer 3

This is called "stream of consciousness." Please read a couple of the links in here:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=stream+of+consciousness

Also, please define "tone" for me.

Answer 4

Here's a good definition. Does it match what you understand from the word?

"Tone. The writer's attitude toward his readers and his subject; his mood or moral view. A writer can be formal, informal, playful, ironic, and especially, optimistic or pessimistic. While both Swift and Pope are satirizing much the same subjects, there is a profound difference in their tone."
http://virtualsalt.com/litterms4.htm

Answer 5

Thank you so much! When I say tone, I'm referring to the feeling behind the passage.. Ex: Dr. Seuss writing has a light, whimsical tone. Or Joan Dilard tends to be very dark and brooding.

Answer 6

Who do you think the writer is? Someone who has spent his/her life studying English lit?

The tone is probably one of these:
deprecating
critical
reproachful