Material from comunication

Title page

Material from comunication

Image Making.
Read the following selection from Hawthorne and form a clear mental image of each scene:

At first, my fancy saw only the stern hills, lonely lakes, and venerable woods. Not a tree, since their seeds were first scattered over the infant soil, had felt the ax, but had grown up and flourished through its long generation, had fallen beneath the weight of years, been buried in green moss, and nourished the roots of others as gigantic. Hark! A light paddle dips into the lake, a birch canoe glides around the point, and an Indian chief has passed, painted and feather-crested, armed with a bow of hickory, a stone tomahawk, and flint-headed arrows. But the ripple had hardly vanished from the water, when a white flag caught the breeze, over a castle in the wilderness, with frowning ramparts and a hundred cannon.... A war party of French and Indians were issuing from the gate to lay waste some village of New England. Near the fortress there was a group of dancers. The merry soldiers footing it with the swart savage maids; deeper in the wood, some red men were growing frantic around a keg of the fire-water; and elsewhere a Jesuit preached the faith of high cathedrals beneath a canopy of forest boughs.

Did you form clear mental images? Can you picture them all at the same time, or must you turn your attention from one image to another? The formation of the proper mental images will be aided by making a persistent effort to create them.

Many words do not cause us to form images; for example,  goodness, innocence, position, insurance; but when the purpose of a word is to set forth an image, we should take care to get the correct one. In this the dictionary will not always help us. We must distinguish between the ability to repeat a definition and the power to form an accurate image of the thing defined. The difficulty of forming correct images by the use of dictionary definitions is so great that the definitions are frequently accompanied by pictures.

EXERCISES
Notice the different mental images that come to you as you read each of the following selections. Distinguish words that cause images to arise from those that do not.

Full to the brim our rivers flowed;

The melody of waters filled

The fresh and boundless wood;

And torrents dashed, and rivulets played,

And fountains spouted in the shade.


 * Bryant: An Indian at the Burial Place of his Fathers.


 * Cooper: Last of the Mohicans.


 * Scott: Ivanhoe.

The village smithy stands;

The smith, a mighty man is he,

With large and sinewy hands;

And the muscles of his brawny arms

Are strong as iron bands.


 * Longfellow: The Village Blacksmith.

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door;

" ’ Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door—

Only this, and nothing more."


 * Edgar A. Poe: The Raven.

He watch ’ d the wheeling eddies boil,

Till, from their foam, his dazzled eyes

Beheld the River Demon rise;

The mountain mist took form and limb

Of noontide hag or goblin grim.


 * Scott: Lady of the Lake.


 * Washington Irving: Rip Van Winkle.

Complete and Incomplete Images.
Some sentences have for their purpose the presentation of an image, but in order to form that image correctly and completely, we must be familiar with the words used. If an unfamiliar word is introduced, the mind may omit entirely the image represented, or may substitute some other for it. Notice the image presented by this sentence from Henry James: "Her dress was dark and rich; she had pearls around her neck and an old rococo fan in her hand." If the meaning of rococo is unknown to you, the image which you form will not be exactly the one that Mr. James had in mind. The pearls and the dress may stand out clearly in your image, but the fan will be lacking or indistinct. The whole may be compared to a photograph of which a part is blurred. If your attention is directed to the fan, you may recall the word rococo, but not the image represented by it. If your attention is not called to the fan, the mind is satisfied with the indistinct image, or substitutes for it an image of some other fan. Such an image is therefore either incomplete or inaccurate.

An oath in court provides that we shall "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," but, in forming images, it is not always possible to hold our minds to such exactness. We are prone to picture more or less than the words convey. In fact, in some forms of prose, and often in poetry, the author purposely takes advantage of this habit of the mind and wishes us to enlarge with creations of our own imagination the bare image that his words convey. Such writing, however, aims to give pleasure or to arouse our emotions. It calls out something in the reader even more strongly than it sets forth something in the writer. This suggestiveness in writing will be considered later, but for the present it will be well for you to bear in mind that most language has for its purpose the exact expression of a definite idea.

EXERCISES
A. Make a list of the words in the following selections whose meanings you need to look up in order to make the images exact and complete. Do not attempt to memorize the language of the definition, but to form a correct image.

Stands the old-fashioned country seat.

Across its antique portico

Tall poplar trees their shadows throw,

And from its station in the hall

An ancient timepiece says to all:

"Forever—never!

Never—forever!"


 * Longfellow: The Old Clock on the Stairs.

Notice in each of these what images are incomplete. Make a list words you would need to look up in order to form complete images. Do not include all the words whose meanings are not clear, but only those that assist in forming images.

Form a clear mental image of some incident, person, or place. Write about it, using such words as will give your readerss complete and accurate images.

Reproduction of Images.
If we were asked to tell about an accident which we had seen, we could recall the various incidents in the order of their occurrence. If the accident had occurred recently, or had made a vivid impression upon us, we could easily form mental images of each scene. If we had only read a description of the accident, it would be more difficult to recall the image; because that which we gain through language is less vitally a part of ourselves than is that which comes to us through experience.

When called upon to reproduce the images suggested to us by language, our memory is apt to concern itself with the words that suggested the image, and our expression is hampered rather than aided by this remembrance. The author has made, or should have made, the best possible selection of words and phrases. If we repeat his language, we have but memory drill or copy work; and if we do not, we are limited to such second-class language as we may be able to find.

Word memory has its uses, but it is less valuable than image memory. It is necessary to distinguish carefully between the images that a writer presents and the words that he uses. If a botany lesson should consist of a description of fifteen different leaves, a pupil deficient in image memory will attempt to memorize the language of the book. A better-trained pupil, on meeting such a term as serrated, will ask himself: "Have I ever seen such a leaf? Can I form an image of it?" If so, his only task will be to give the new name, serrated, to the idea that he already has. In a similar way he will form images for each of the fifteen leaves described in the lesson. The language of the book may help him form these images, but he will make no attempt to commit the language to memory. With him, "getting the lesson" means forming images and naming them, and reciting the lesson will be but talking about an image that he has clearly in mind.

If we are called upon to reproduce the incidents and scenes of some story that has been read to us, our success will depend upon the clearness of the images that we have formed. Our efforts should be directed to making the images as definite and vivid as possible, and our memory will be concerned with the recalling of these images in their proper order, and not with the language that first caused them to appear.

Reproduce a story read to you by a friend.

(Before writing, picture to yourself the scenes and recall the order of their occurrence. If it is necessary to condense, omit events of the least importance.)