okay, so like since my blog is basically the void to all but five mutuals, i think I can have some fun with (bad) literary analysis
We'll start with the first sentence. Because it's kind of crazy.
So with just a name and three words the author has effectively established both tone, character, and even maybe setting with we want to put this baby under a hydraulic press and squeeze every ounce of substance out of it.
Our narrator shares his namesake with a religious character. The story varies by medium, but since this is NOT a thesis paper, we can use our background knowledge to recall Herman Melville was a christian and American in the 1800s. Ishmael is deliberately a Biblical Allusion to the figure in scripture of the same name. His introduction is not overtly friendly, beginning with harsh 'k' in call and stressed 's' in Ishmael, but it is concise and plain without a title or family name. It communicates that from here on out Ishmael will be both our impartial (by christian standards) orator and observer.
Anywho, more parallels between the characters are demonstrated in the following sentence:
Some[1] years ago—never mind how[1] long[1] precisely—having little or no money[1] in my purse, and nothing[1] particular to interest me on shore, I thought[2] I would[2] sail about[2] a little and see the watery part of the world[1].
'lee, what the fuck have you put in front of me?'
It will make in a moment sense I promise T_T
Okay, so continuing on the allusion train for a moment; both Ishmaels were wanderers, but there is contrast here is that Biblical Ishmael wandered the desert North Africa (near Egypt), and Melville's Ishmael is going on an aquatic odyssey in the Atlantic. It also puts Ishmael's recounting as a story that happened in the past.
so, there's at least four literary techniques here that I'll point out: rhyme, assonance, consonance, and repetition.
Me (mē), money (mŭn′ē), precisely (prĭ-sīs′lē) all have an emphasis vowel sound, which generally comes across more pleasantly than the popping p consonants in precisely, purse, particular, etc. There's a few smaller rhymes here like ago, no, or, and shore.
So some, how, long, money, nothing, etc. all have that long 'o' sound that is at odd with that earlier introduction. It's the introductions of those harsh t's that keeps our narrators tone from being too indulgent, even expressing a little dissatisfaction given the first use; little, occurs shortly before the narrator states their shortage of currency. The rhyming too reflects this, with words like having, nothing ending with a consonant that is slightly softened by the i before the n and g, having being a transition before little.
This all culminates into 'I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world". This is probably the most obvious alliteration here -- it stared sooner, but I just adore that those harsh w's and t's, and d's are used instead of a sssssmooth s' sound to characterize the sea as this unpleasant frontier -- the quintessential conflict of man v.s. nature.
Anywho, this shit rocks, and I cannot believe how awful the culture has been for authors historically.
izzy806
yousharknotpass
snowghoul
gracieabrams
turnnoffyourmind
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
