Blog Topic #3: Syntax

·         “And the perfect word for me,” he added in a distorted voice, as though his tongue had swollen, “psycho. I guess I am. I must be. Am I, though, or is the army?” (150).

When Gene meets Leper at his house after receiving a letter from him, Gene quickly realizes, from his words and actually speech, that Leper has gone crazy. John Knowles uses telegraphic sentences and an interrogative sentence to portray Leper’s mental instability after leaving the training camps. The telegraphic sentences manifest Leper’s short, quick thought process which is commonly associated to those who are not sane. The interrogative sentence adds to the idea in that he questions and distrusts even his own thoughts.

·         “To enlist. To slam the door impulsively on the past, to shed everything down to my last bit of clothing, to break the pattern of my life—that complex design I had been weaving since birth with all its dark threads, its unexplainable symbols set against a conventional background of domestic white and schoolboy blue, all those tangles strands which required the dexterity of a virtuoso to keep flowing—I yearned to take giant military shears to it, snap! bitten off in an instant, and nothing left in my hands but spools of khaki which could weave only a plain, flat, khaki design, however twisted they might be”(100).

Above is an example of how John Knowles uses syntax, interrupted and telegraphic sentences, an exclamatory sentence, dashes, and other syntactical devices, to portray his specific idea that enlisting is not all it is made out to be. Knowles interrupts the loose sentence to expand more on the pattern of life mentioned and how easily it can be overlooked and tossed away when regarding war, the use of an exclamatory emphasizes the easiness of it all. The contrasting sentence lengths, one being telegraphic and the other long, aides in the severity of the situation also.