Post by account_disabled on Dec 8, 2023 23:32:35 GMT -5
There are those who advise against the use of many adjectives. The effect one gets from their abuse is redundant. But adjectives serve, qualify, demonstrate, describe. I often use too many and then I reread and correct and eliminate some, also because sometimes they are synonyms, with a different sound but the same meaning. I would like to give some practical examples, taken from two writers I love and who have different opinions on the use of adjectives (the bold ones are mine).
Adjectives in Jack London The Yeehats were dancing around the ruins of the fir hut when they heard a terrible roar and felt attacked by an animal they had never seen. It was Buck, a living hurricane of fury, who hurled himself against them, mad for destruction and slaughter. He leapt at the first one (he was the leader of the Yeehat), opening his throat until a fountain of blood began to gush from the jugular artery. The Call of the Wild . Four adjectives in 67 words. I had read somewhere that Phone Number Data London had declared a sort of war on adjectives and in fact I have always found few of them in his writing.
Adjectives in Cormac McCarthy A world beyond all imagination, malevolent and tactile and dissociated , burnt out light bulbs like opalescent skull- coloured topped octopuses bobbing on the surface of the water and ghostly eyes of fuel and here and there smelly forms of human fetuses stranded and swollen like little birds, with the eyes are round , and bluish or mold-colored. Suttree . In this passage there are 14 adjectives in 53 words: one adjective every 4 words, on average. McCarthy makes extensive use of it, but everything flows anyway, like a raw poem that does not want to entertain but project the reader into a living reality.
Adjectives in Jack London The Yeehats were dancing around the ruins of the fir hut when they heard a terrible roar and felt attacked by an animal they had never seen. It was Buck, a living hurricane of fury, who hurled himself against them, mad for destruction and slaughter. He leapt at the first one (he was the leader of the Yeehat), opening his throat until a fountain of blood began to gush from the jugular artery. The Call of the Wild . Four adjectives in 67 words. I had read somewhere that Phone Number Data London had declared a sort of war on adjectives and in fact I have always found few of them in his writing.
Adjectives in Cormac McCarthy A world beyond all imagination, malevolent and tactile and dissociated , burnt out light bulbs like opalescent skull- coloured topped octopuses bobbing on the surface of the water and ghostly eyes of fuel and here and there smelly forms of human fetuses stranded and swollen like little birds, with the eyes are round , and bluish or mold-colored. Suttree . In this passage there are 14 adjectives in 53 words: one adjective every 4 words, on average. McCarthy makes extensive use of it, but everything flows anyway, like a raw poem that does not want to entertain but project the reader into a living reality.