Friday, March 20, 2020

The eNotes Blog Ten Character Sketches, Sketched Portraits of Literatures Most Infamous andMemorable

Ten Character Sketches, Sketched Portraits of Literatures Most Infamous andMemorable Ever wonder what your favorite, or most haunting, characters from literature might actually look like? Many writers give readers vivid descriptions but very few of their characters have ever sat for a portrait. Artist, avid reader, and blogger Brian Joseph Davis came up with the idea to create these composite sketches of literary characters, using similar techniques as those of law enforcement to visualize their features. New to Tumblr, (a program that allows users to share just about anything), Davis at first thought this project would be a slow burn. Much to his surprise, the project became an immediate global sensation. In just over a month, The Composites has been featured in   The Atlantic, CNET, the Guardian  and  BBC, Slate France, and Sky Italy, among others. Here are ten of Daviss sketches and the passage that helped him draw the characters: 1. Humbert Humbert, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov Gloomy good looks†¦Clean-cut jaw, muscular hand, deep sonorous voice†¦broad shoulder†¦I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally handsome male; slow-moving, tall, with soft dark hair and a gloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanor. Exceptional virility often reflects in the subject’s displayable features a sullen and congested something that pertains to what he has to conceal. And this was my case†¦But instead I am lanky, big-boned, wooly-chested Humbert Humbert, with thick black eyebrows†¦A cesspoolful of rotting monsters behind his slow boyish smile†¦aging ape eyes†¦Humbert’s face might twitch with  neuralgia. 2.   Marla Singer, Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk My power animal is  Marla†¦Black hair and pillowy French lips. Faker. Italian dark leather sofa lips†¦Marla  stares up at me. Her eyes are brown. Her  earlobes pucker around earring holes, no earrings†¦She actually felt alive. Her skin was clearing up†¦Marla never has any fat of her own, and her mom figures  that familial collagen would be better than Marla ever having to use the cheap cow kind†¦Short matte black hair, big  eyes  the way they are in Japanese animation, skim milk thin, buttermilk sallow in her dress with a wallpaper pattern of  dark roses†¦Her black  hair  whipping my face†¦The color of Marla’s brown  eyes  is like an animal that’s been heated in a furnace and dropped into  cold water. They call that vulcanized or galvanized or tempered. 3. Ignatius J. Reilly, A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs. In the shadow under the green visor of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly’s supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. 4.   Daisy Buchanan, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth†¦a conscientious expression†¦Slenderly, languidly†¦an expression of unthoughtful sadness†¦her cheeks flushed†¦she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society†¦a bright ecstatic smile†¦Aching, grieving beauty†¦ For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery†¦Girls were swooning backward playfully into men’s arms, even into groups knowing that some one would arrest their falls- but no one swooned backward on Gatsby and no French bob touched Gatsby’s shoulder. 5.   Tess, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy She was a fine and handsome girl- not handsomer than some others, possibly- but her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to colour and shape†¦ The pouted-up deep red mouth to which this syllable was native had hardly as yet settled into its definite shape, and her lower lip had a way of thrusting the middle of her top one upward, when they closed together after a word†¦Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still. As she walked along to-day, for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes†¦a thick cable of twisted dark hair hanging straight down her back to her waist. 6.   Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The V motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down- from high flat temples- in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan. 7.   The Misfit, â€Å"A Good Man Is Hard To Find,† Flannery O’Connor He was an older man than the other two. His hair was just beginning to gray and he wore silver-rimmed spectacles that gave him a scholarly look. He had a long creased face and didn’t have on any shirt or undershirt. He had on blue jeans that were too tight for him and was holding a black hat and a gun†¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ When he smiled he showed a row of strong white teeth†¦Hunching his shoulders slightly†¦The Misfit’s eyes were red-rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking. 8.   Emma Bovary, Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert She was pale all over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils, her eyes looked at you vaguely. After discovering three grey hairs on her temples, she talked much of her old age†¦Her eyelids seemed chiseled expressly for her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared, while a strong inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the fleshy corner of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black down. 9.   Edward Rochester, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontà « Mr. Rochester, his foot supported by the cushion; he was looking at Adà ¨le and the dog: the fire shone full on his face.   I knew my traveller with his broad and jetty eyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal sweep of his black hair.   I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for character than beauty; his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler; his grim mouth, chin, and jaw- yes, all three were very grim, and no mistake.   His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in squareness with his physiognomy†¦My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth. 10.   Tom Ripley, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith †¦Combed his light-brown hair neatly in front of the  mirror, and set off for Radio City.  He had always thought he had the world’s dullest face, a thoroughly forgettable face with a look of docility that he could not understand, and a look also of vague fright that he had never been able to erase. A real conformist’s face, he thought†¦Really it was only his darker hair  that was very different from Dickie. Otherwise, his  nose- or at least its general  form- his  narrow  jaw,  his  eyebrows  if  he  held  them  right†¦He wasn’t really worried. Tom had at first amused himself with an eyebrow pencil- Dickie’s eyebrows were longer and turned up a little at the outer edges- and with a touch of putty at the end of his  nose  to make it longer and more pointed, but he abandoned these as too likely to be noticed. The main thing about impersonation, Tom thought, was to maintain the mood and temperament of the person one was impersonating, and to assume the facial expressions that went with them. The rest fell into place†¦He might play up Tom a little more, he thought. He could stoop a little more, he could be shyer than ever, he could even wear horn-rimmed glasses  and  hold  his  mouth  in  an  even  sadder,  droopier  manner to contrast with Dickie’s tenseness.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

3 Types of Compound-Word Errors

3 Types of Compound-Word Errors 3 Types of Compound-Word Errors 3 Types of Compound-Word Errors By Mark Nichol Compound words can easily confuse writers. Compound nouns, for example, are variously styled closed (for example, horseshoe), hyphenated (light-year), and open (â€Å"income tax†). But correctly formatting a noun isn’t the only challenge when it comes to determining whether one word or two is appropriate. This post discusses three classes of errors in usage regarding compounds. First, adverbs such as altogether and prepositions like nevertheless and notwithstanding are often styled â€Å"all together,† â€Å"not withstanding,† and â€Å"never the less,† but although use of these phrases is at least plausible (for example, â€Å"When they were all together, we found that they were more likely to agree†), when they serve as adverbs and prepositions, it is never correct to treat them as separate words. (Yes, all and together are both adverbs, but â€Å"all together† is a sequence of two adverbs, one intensifying the other, not a single adverb.) On the other hand, the following phrases are never correct as one word: alot, alright, eachother, moreso, and nevermind (except, in the latter case, as the title of a certain album). (Alright is in the dictionary, and I’ve used it in this post, but those appearances are merely acknowledgments of its existence, not endorsements.) Everyday, meanwhile, is correct only as an adjective (as in the phrase â€Å"everyday savings†), not standing on its own (the correct treatment is â€Å"You’ll find savings every day†). Then there is a large class of words that, like everyday, are correctly closed in one grammatical form and open in another. For example, when one writes that one plans to work out, the verb phrase is treated correctly. But when describing what one plans to do, one refers to â€Å"doing a workout.† This is true of numerous verb-preposition phrases such as â€Å"log in,† â€Å"break down,† and â€Å"mark up† that become closed compounds when they serve as nouns. Note, however, that there are exceptions, including come-on, in which the compound is hyphenated as shown. (Such exceptions generally persist because of the aversion to having two consecutive vowels in a compound word.) Navigating such vagaries of the English language is annoying, but we are fortunate to have at our disposal dictionaries and other helpful resources. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Common Mistakes category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:50 Idioms About Legs, Feet, and ToesWhat is Dative Case?Epidemic vs. Pandemic vs. Endemic