Kyle's Seventh Essay

Kyle Sebastian
Professor H. Salsich
English 02
3 November 2008
“Déjà vu:
An Essay on the Advantages of Re-reading.”

TS: We are always told to check over our work in math class to make sure that we didn’t miss anything, this is also applied in re-reading books. SD: I’ve found one new thing in “The Garden Party” the second time I read it through. CM: The first thing is that Katherine Mansfield loves to use imagery and describe every detail with great amounts of grace and beauty. CM: She has numerous examples of imagery throughout her short story.

TS: There are three beautifully written examples of imagery in the book that I would like to discuss. SD: One of them is “The green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels.” (Mansfield pg. 1)CM: I loved this example of imagery, I imagined the bushes as green humans in a great hall of white marble and gold awaiting the arrival of the heavenly angels. CM: Then the angels would descend from a magnificent stairway leading up into the heavens. SD: Another example of imagery is when Ms. Mansfield writes “And they were so, with their broad, gleaming leaves, and their clusters of yellow fruit. They were like trees you imagined growing on a desert island, proud, solitary, lifting their leaves and fruits to the sun in a kind of silent splendor.” (Mansfield pg. 3)CM: The image I got of these divine sounding fruits was mouthwatering. CM: When an author is able to get you to feel emotions just by reading something then that writing is superb. SD: My last example of imagery is on page four when she writes “All the doors in the house seemed to be open. The house was alive with soft, quick steps and running voices. The green baize door that led to the kitchen regions swung open and shut with a muffled thud. And now there came a long, chuckling absurd sound. It was the heavy piano being moved off its stiff castors. But the air! If you stopped to notice, was the air always like this? Little faint words were playing chase, in at the tops of the windows, out at the doors. And there were two tiny spots of sun, one on the inkpot, one on a silver photograph frame, playing too. Darling little spots. Especially the one on the inkpot lid. It was quite warm. A warm little silver star. She could have kissed it.” (Mansfield pg. 4) CM: Now this was a very long passage, but brilliantly written nevertheless. CM: It was written marvelously, can be spoken wonderfully, and leaves a truly magnificent view of the Sheridan’s house in the mind of the reader. CS: It's very enjoying when you can picture what your reading so that you get more into the story.

TS: When you look things over again you often find things you’ve never noticed about before. SD: Ms. Mansfield has a gift for imagery and “The Garden Party” certainly shows it. CM: She describes so many things and describes them so wonderfully. CM: The images I get from her writing make the story all the better.