Aim: How does Golding create suspense through the use of short syntax?
Do Now: Define “savagery”
Our first class discussion of the day centered around the following question: “Do you think the boys are savage? If so, when was the transition?”
Most of the class expressed the opinion that the boys are, in fact, savage, which I somewhat agree with. The transition into savagery they mentioned was the chanting and celebration that ensued after the first successful hunt of the pig. There are others, including most of my group (me included) who believe that they are not savage, and are just trying to survive. They do the hunting in order to feed themselves, and the celebration might be to keep morale up or to show that they are proud of being able to survive without the help of civilization. This latter interpretation is what I personally think. Another group of students believed that they are not savages yet, but are beginning the descent into savagery. They cited the event in which Robert is captured and nearly killed as the first step in their descent into madness.
After this talk, we discussed syntax; more specifically, how important punctuation is when trying to get a point across or to set a tone. First, we were introduced to the classic example of “Let’s eat, grandma!” vs “Let’s eat grandma!”. This difference between the two led into a very handy rule of thumb for punctuation:
Peterson’s Perceptive Proclamation (paraphrased): “Commas should be used in the same manner as when you are speaking and take a pause to breathe. It is your body’s and your mind’s instinct to pause, think about what to say next, and let your audience digest whatever you just said.”
Next up was the discussion on the other part of the aim, namely the “suspense” portion of it.
Suspense is the state or feeling of anxious uncertainty in regards to what may happen. After establishing this as the definition of suspense, we were given the task of figuring out why an author. Following this was a short turn-and-talk amongst our group members, and we came up with this reason: Suspense helps to raise interest in the topic being discussed or read about. Other groups shared similar sentiments, and Ms. Peterson provided an example of not using suspense or any other engaging elements of story-telling: it would be akin to a very boring economics class.
We reread the near-murdering of Robert to discuss the author’s writing style there, and to bring together the discussions of syntax and suspense. We were asked to discuss between ourselves why the use of short sentences causes suspense. Our group came to the conclusion that short sentences create suspense by limiting the amount of information that each sentence can provide. This lack of knowledge means that the reader can’t possibly know what could happen next. Another point, courtesy of Joel, is that this part of the book is very fast-paced, and the shorter sentences help the story to keep up with such a savage, adrenaline-filled section.
To put our entire class discussion into practice, we were asked to write a short paragraph using this short syntax. After finishing this paragraph, we were free to discuss our upcoming project, which is to create a presentation about a holiday-themed isolated island.
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