Blog 1: Rhetorical Strategies

·         Allusion:

o   Biblical:  “The beach shed its deadness and became a spectral gray-white, then more white than gray, and finally it was totally white and stainless, as pure as the shores of Eden.  Phineas, still asleep on his dune, made me think of Lazarus, brought back to life by the touch of God” (50).

o   Historical:  “It was as though Athens and Sparta were trying to establish not just a truce but an alliance – although we were not as civilized as Athens and they were not as brave as Sparta” (159).

·         Conceit

o   “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 that 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 tangled strands…I yearned to take giant military shears to it…nothing left in my hand but spools of khaki which could weave only a plain, flat khaki design, however twisted they might be” (100). 

o   With foreshadowing:  “So the war swept over like a wave at the seashore, gathering power and size as it bore on us, overwhelming in its rush, seemingly inescapable, and then at the last moment eluded by a word from Phineas; I had simply ducked…I did not stop to think that one wave is inevitable followed by another even larger and more powerful, when the tide is coming in” (110).

·         Repetition:  “You always were a savage underneath.  I always knew that only I never admitted it…It’s you we happen to be talking about right now.  Like a savage underneath…Laughing and crying he lay with his head on the floor and his knees up, “…always were a savage underneath’” (145).

·         Anadiplosis:  “It was only that we could feel a deep and sincere difference between us and them, a difference which everyone struggled with awkward fortitude to bridge” (159).

·         Antithesis:  “The tone of his words fell dead center, without a trace of friendliness of unfriendliness, not interested and not bored, not energetic and not languid” (188).

Knowles utilizes conceit, allusion, anadiplosis, antithesis, and repetition in order to illuminate aspects of the novel that focus around the effects of war on humans.  At one instance, his referral to Lazarus and the Garden of Eden depict how Phineas is a character that has been through struggles, yet has a different perspective on life and war in context to his peers.  The author’s references are a prominent part of his writing style in that every comparison made has a deeper meaning reflected by the personality and beliefs held by an individual.  His employment of deeper meaning into the novel is also seen through his use of conceit, where he compares the war to the tide of an ocean, portraying how both are inevitable; and although each goes through periods of stability and enchantment, or in the case of war, glorified depictions revolving around patriotism, have the capacity to ruin lives and bring about disaster. He also uses conceit to characterize the effects of war on Gene by showing his frustration with his own life and his desire to alter his experiences by fighting in the war to gain a sense of purpose.  By having Gene compare his life to fabric, the author is able to portray how war is like scissors that cut through the routing of everyday life and alter one’s perceptions about the world.  Knowles’s employment of such extended metaphors are a prominent feature of his style, in that just like his use of allusion, the themes and characters in the novel are given a more philosophical meaning than what is seen.  His use of repetition of “you always were a savage underneath” literally embodies his style in that it plants the idea of the existence of discrepancies between appearances and the truth, since every character and situation in the novel has secrets and traits that distinguish their true being from how they represent themselves to others.  In addition, Knowles’s use of the word “difference” in his anadiplosis targets the same theme again, further implementing his belief of appearance vs. reality.  Lastly, by applying antithesis in his writing, he establishes the delicate balance of embedding a universal theme into the plot, which becomes a distinguished feature of his style.  Through his utilization of various literary strategies, John Knowles is successful in getting his point across in his own notable manner, thus bringing his own style to the words on the page.