Friday, March 14, 2014
Commentary #3
In Chapter 7, Reverend Kumalo has been reunited with his sister and is writing about it to his wife. He notices the beautiful day outside, "the sun was shining, and even in the great city there were birds, small sparrows that chirped and flew about in the yard" (Patton 75). This bright and happy day reflects Reverend Kumalo's mood of happiness now that he has found and rescued his sister. The weather symbolizes his happy mood without Reverend Kumalo having to say that he is happy. This use of weather to symbolize character's feelings is often used by many authors, including John Steinbeck, one of Alan Paton's stylistic inspirations for this novel. Since Alan Paton uses John Steinbeck's style of dashes instead of quotations, I wonder if Alan Paton will use any more of Steinbeck's writing style in this novel besides the quotes and the symbolism of weather.
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Cece, I think that you brought up an intriguing point about using the weather as a symbol, a point that I did not notice. I also liked how you incorporated Alan Paton's inspirations to hypothesize why his style is so unique. I wonder if Alan Paton was in fact inspired by other authors or he developed the style on his own.
ReplyDeleteI didn't notice the use of weather, nice find! It's like you said; in movies and other books. I also think it's interesting to think about the connections between this book and the works of Steinbeck.
ReplyDeleteNow that we've talked about some of the similarities between these authors I hope you'll take notice of others. Your commentary is very thoughtful - as are these responses.
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