Assignment 2

The choice of an author’s descriptive text is essential if their aim is to illustrate the silent pictures of their mind. For instance, morbidly fat compared to obese brings to mind two vary drastic images. The first paints a picture of a 500 Lb man being extricated from his home by crane, the second; obese merely projects the sad but not uncommon image of a 300 Lb person devouring a cheeseburger.
Charles Brockden Brown is a master word smith. Rather than depict environment through flowery topographical words, Brown illustrates scenarios instead through the emotional and mental hardships endured by Edgar Huntley. In Ch 21 Brown begins his journey anew after a chance reprieve from pursuit and hardship. Fate provides a dwelling that enables him an hours rest and nourishment. Hope rekindled, he begins is expedition again with earnestness.
By the bottom of page 208 Edgar’s situation has again deteriorated. “Motion was the only thing that could keep me from freezing, and my frame was in the state which allowed me to take repose in the absence of warmth; since warmth where indispensable. It now occurred to me to ask whether it were not possible to kindle a fire.”
Brown’s subtly statement of Edgar’s mental repose due to the lack of warmth conjures a frightful image of sub-arctic conditions and the looming approach of deaths icy fingers. Edgar, seemingly delirious draws upon his last ruminants of self-will in order to consider whether a fire is even conceivable.
Edgar, spying his environment for the first time discovers that the rudimentary elements needed to create fire are at hand. Edgar reassured, “I might finally procure sufficient fire to give me comfort and ease, and even enable me to sleep. This boon was delicious and I felt as if I were unable to support a longer deprivation of it.” The reader can’t help but feel the bone chilling terror Edgar faces as hypothermia and fatigue rest to steal his life.
Edgar then attempts his scheme. “I took the driest of leaves, and endeavored to use them as tinder, but the driest leaves were moistened by the dews. They were only to be found in the hollows, in some of which were pools of water and others were dank. I was not speedily discouraged, but my repeated attempts failed.”
Browns simple use of the words dew, hollow, and dank presents a vast forest canopy, wet and cold, a rugged wilderness were man does not belong. Edgar shrouded in darkness envisions the warmth of a fire and is relentless until Mother Nature conquers his primal instinct to survive.
Brown’s textual style and ability to project mental images through the sensations Edgar encounters is extraordinary. His writing style does something to your guts when you read it. Other authors use flowery descriptive passages to create a setting. Rather than discuss a characters lack of warmth, other authors would have detailed windy conditions, rain, elevation, and temperature in order to establish credibility for a characters situation. Brown wastes no pen with these frivolities by delving purely into the psyche of his character. Truly Brown is a cut above his peers.