Thursday, January 14, 2010
Guest Blogger - Patty M.
As we all know, we are reading dramas for our final essay and I’ve decided to talk about the one I have chosen since so few decided to read it. I am reading The Hairy Ape by Eugene O’Neill. It starts off in a firemen’s forecastle of an ocean liner with the protagonist, Yank, getting drunk with the other workers. They all shovel coal to power the vessel but at the moment most of them are as drunk as a skunk thus incapacitated. While drunk the men are rowdy and all singing and Yank tells them to quiet down because he’s trying to think. The men stop (momentarily) because they all respect him because they fear him and he doesn’t try to assuage their fears either, he prefers it that way. Yank is very cynical about life in general however he is even more so about family and women. He believes that women are all tarts and will betray a man for nickel. And because of that he treats them extremely poorly. He goes so far as to say “treat ‘em rough, dat’s me” (O’Neill Act I Scene I) But what I really want to talk about is the accents in which they speak. As you can see in the quote Yank has an accent but what you can’t see in that quote is that most of the characters have heavy Bostonian accents as well which in my opinion adds a whole new aspect to the story. I think that accents in books add to the character (not character as in the people in the story) of the book by bringing in different lifestyles and cultures. Which is a more interesting piece of literature (if they are the same type of story with the same writing style)? A story without an obvious accent or one with at least a single character with one?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think that a book with regional dialect can be more interesting, because it allows you to really put yourself into the area that they are at. It helps you get into the book
ReplyDeleteI also read this book for my final as well this year. Every time Yank has a conversation with a person whom has a higher status than he does the person with the higher status than he does has a more clear english dilect that he does. I think the regional dilect represents the status of ones role in society. So the person with the less dilect will have a higher position in society than a person such as Yank to have a lower position in society. Thus, we can say from the book that the regional dilect segragates people into social catagories of statuses. This is one of the reasons why I think the book is Yank vs. society but if anyone has a different opinion why regional dilect plays effectivly in the play please post.
ReplyDeleteI also think that different dialects throughout a book adds something interesting about it. As characters have different dialects it can allow you to understand the multiple cultures.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I think that different dialects add more to the book. I also think that it makes the book more difficult to understand. If you do not know background on the culture you may interpret the story very differently from they way the author intended.
ReplyDeleteDialects do help with interpretation, but they help even more with character development. Dialect and the language that a character uses speaks volumes about their personality. Take Huckleberry Fin for example. The dialect that Jim uses is very different than the dialect that Huck uses. You can also see regional dialect in the Grapes of Wrath where the Joad family all had a dialect and a certain way of speaking which helped develop their characters.
ReplyDelete-Karissa B.
As everyone else, I agree. I see regional dialect as just another trait of a character. The same as if we were talking about a character's type of dress, or size, or personality. Its also a connection of the character to the setting, or in some cases a lack there of a connection. Dialects can show how a character belongs in the setting, or how the character is out of place and new to the setting.
ReplyDeleteI too, thought of Huck Finn after reading this blog post. One of my favorite aspects of that book was the dialect and how it really put you in the character's shoes and made the story quite a bit more interesting.
ReplyDeleteA Streetcar Named Desire is loaded with dialect which I think makes it much more diverse. Whearas Stella and Blanche come from the Belle Reve, Stanley comes from a poorer area in the south. An example of how simple their pasts are to see is the dialogue exchanged between Blanche and Stanley. Dialect serves as an important trait when analyzing a character, and something as simple as a stutter or a condescending tone can change the way one views a character.
ReplyDelete