I was born in the back of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of those things made me melancholy because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory.
Eva Luna, by Isabel Allende
You can create surprise at the story level with the plot taking an unexpected turn. You can also create surprise at the sentence level, with the sentence starting down one path, traveling merrily along, then suddenly changing direction and heading to a foreign land.
The hinge, the fork in the road, is the seemingly lowly word “but.” It turns out the coordinate conjunction is powerful, inherently altering the sentence’s path. Given the house where the narrator, Eva Luna, was born, with its overwhelming death and decay, it seems clear she’s destined to become a sad soul. But she doesn’t.
Allende uses a series, the threes, to describe what’s in the house. In Winston Weather’s essay, “The Rhetoric of Series,” he notes that the writer “can write the three-part series and create the effect of the normal, the reasonable, the believable, the logical.” The series suggests containment or a whole, akin to a syllogism, a beginning, middle, and end. In Allende’s sentence, the shadowy house has 1) ancient furniture, 2) books in Latin (a dead language), and 3) human mummies. So much is accomplished, too, by the adjectives.
With the turn invoked by “but,” the expected is negated with the independent clause, “but none of those things made me melancholy.” Then we come to the stunning dependent clause, “because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory.”
Allende amplifies the unexpected in several ways. She uses personification to animate the jungle, giving it a breath. The jungle as an image suggests a place teeming with life, which is the very antithesis of the images at the beginning of the sentence, which are associated with death. Not only does the jungle usher in life, but also the wild and uncontrollable, which adds more tension to the sentence and the story. What will be the trajectory of the jungle-infused Eva Luna?
Can you hear Allende’s music?
Alliteration: born/back/books/breath; mummies/made/melancholy/my/memory. There’s a wonderful connection and transformation from “melancholy” to “memory.”
Assonance: room/grew/furniture; back/Latin; mummies/jungle. Again, there’s a wonderful connection and transformation from “mummies” to “jungle.”
She also opens the sentence with an anapestic rhythm, two soft stresses followed by a heavier stress, I was born in the back of a shadowy house (heavier stresses in bold). In the middle of the sentence, she varies the rhythm, but at the end, she returns to it with a breath of the jungle in my memory.
Your Turn
Start with a right-branching sentence, with the subject and verb at the beginning. Since you’re practicing, you can describe a place, like Allende did.
Include three objects found in the setting. The objects should create an atmosphere. Here, Allende created a sense of death and decay.
Now add “but” and, using a second independent clause negate the expected conclusion of how the setting should affect the protagonist.
Add a dependent clause and use antithesis and personification to suggest the opposite of the expected conclusion.
Can you add music?
What did you create?
What else do you see?
About Me:
I’ve taught “Style in Fiction,” “Word for Word” and “Cultivating Your Prose” at the University of San Francisco and Stanford Continuing Studies since 2007. Painters have paint, sculptors have clay. We have words, and words are sounds, and if you pay close attention to this, you can make music.
Please visit my website to find all of my books: ninaschuyler.com, including my novel Afterword, How to Write Stunning Sentences, and Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal.
Afterword News!
Afterword was named a finalist for the 2023 Best Book Awards by the American Book Fest in the category of General Fiction!
Upcoming Reading:
Bay Area Folks! I’ll be reading at the Fairfax Public Library on November 30 with two lovely local writers. I’ve spent many hours writing in this library, which has fantastically comfortable chairs. No eating in the library, though.
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Thank you!
UPDATE: I heard back from Isabel Allende's assistant. Here's what he said:
Isabel works closely with her English translators. Usually as they translate sections they would send them to Isabel for her to review and then there is a final review of the entire book.
Best regards,
Nicolas
Striving to match the captivating allure of this prompt:
In the quiet decay of the mansion, Elizabeth and Jean found their sanctuary, the echoes of its past grandiosity still lingering in the air. The scent of old mahogany, the sight of faded tapestries portraying battles long forgotten, and the touch of delicate, time-worn lace curtains crafted an ambience of a bygone opulence.
But the walls, veined with ivy, could not contain the vibrant connection that sparked between them. Their affection, once dormant, now bloomed defiantly, a stark contrast to the subdued whispers of the house's aged spirits. With every lingering glance and soft-spoken word, they infused the air with a warmth that the cool stone corridors had not felt in years.
The mansion, as if recognizing the change, seemed to play a different tune, the floorboards creaking in rhythm to the new pulse of life within its chambers. In the midst of relics whispering of mortality, they discovered an immortal tenderness, crafting a living testament within the manor's silent walls. What unfolded was a dance of light and shadow, the interplay of life asserting itself amidst the trappings of time, creating a harmony that resonated through the old southern air.