Chapter 7
Alberto Moravia’s Style of Writing in “The Chase”
Sample essay by the author of this book
You will find my sample essay in Chapter-Seven related material on my website.
To exemplify every step of the format for writing this assignment, the gripping story “The Chase” by Italian author Alberto Moravia (1907-1990) offers an attractive excuse for this style-appreciation exercise. The Roman numerals in this sample essay correspond to the “step-by-step instructions” of the format. I have used the cluster thesis variety to organize this paper. The subheadings are meant to connect this sample with the instructions. Neither the numerals nor the subheadings – introduction, thesis, main body, topic sentences, and conclusion – are permissible in formal essays, and you should not use them in your paper. I have used them merely to make it easier for you to see how the sample follows the format and instructions. Read the story on the internet or in a book. Even if you are unable to read the story, my points are clearly understandable because I have included enough details from the story.
TITLE: Alberto Moravia’s Style of Writing in “The Chase”
INTRODUCTION
Lord Chesterfield defined style as the “dress of thought.” This eighteenth-century definition of style has been often quoted authoritatively in discussions of style. However, from Chesterfield’s words one may get the wrong notion of style as embellishment. We can formulate a more accurate definition of style if we consider it the instrument of shaping as well as expressing our thoughts. Monroe C. Beardsley’s words are in line with the contemporary view of style: “. . . a difference of style is always a difference in meaning – though implicit – and an important and notable difference of style is always a sizeable difference in meaning” (Beardsley 7). The filmmaker Jean-Luc Goddard’s words express a similar view: “To me, style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style like the outside and inside of the human body – both go together, they can’t be separated” (Williams 1).
The impact of style on the clarity and quality of the communicated content is undeniable. Nevertheless, a vast majority among us read books the same way we watch movies: We go to them for their content, for ideas only. By cultivating the habit of paying attention to the way ideas are expressed, we can become more aware of the role of style in literature and enhance our enjoyment in the process. In brief, the close connection that exists between content and style proves that an author’s style of writing is as crucial to the success of literary creation as technical aspects of a production, such as camera angles, special effects, and cinematography, are to a movie’s success.
THESIS PARAGRAPH (cluster thesis)
Alberto Moravia is an author who seems aware of the importance of style. He makes effective use of the stylistic elements of flashback, imagery, and contrast in his short story “The Chase”to embody his themes and maximize the story’s impact. He chooses the device of flashback to illustrate his predominant theme that people’s characters are formed by their past. The second notable device of imagery is used to create the desired reader response. Contrast, the next element of style, brings into sharper focus the contrapuntal elements in the story to reveal the author’s upholding or disapproval of certain kinds of attributes and conduct.
SUPPORT
A. Discussion of the first element of style
The topic sentence opens this paragraph to start the discussion of Moravia’s first element of style that was mentioned in the thesis paragraph.
Alberto Moravia uses the device of flashback, which recurs as a reminiscence throughout the story at strategic moments to regulate the narrator’s conduct, thereby reinforcing the theme that past experiences play an important role in determining people’s behavior. He opens the story with a childhood recollection of the narrator’s first and last hunting experience. It was an experience that introduced him to the notion of wildness: “At that moment... the notion of wildness entered my mind, never again to leave it.” At the same time, this experience from his remote past showed him how wildness could be destroyed:
“Then all of a sudden there was an explosion; I could no longer see the bird and I thought it had flown away. But my father . . . stooped down, picked up something and put it in my hand. I was aware of something warm and soft and I lowered my eyes: there was the bird in the palm of my hand, its dangling, shattered head crowned with a plume of already-thickening blood. I burst into tears and dropped the corpse on the ground, and that was the end of my shooting experience.”
It is this very experience that exerts a great influence on the narrator’s later life. Moravia makes this vivid recollection surface again several times in the story, most importantly, at the crucial moment when the narrator, who has woefully resigned himself to the demise of his wife’s passion, notices a stir of that same wildness in her that had made him love her in the past. As the narrator follows his wife secretly, he too feels that same rush of blood, but he is soon shocked when he sees his wife in the arms of another man. It is at this critical moment of his life when he feels like seizing his wife by her hair and hurling himself upon her lover that his childhood experience flashes upon his mind and stops him from doing what he instinctively feels he should do:
“But what else would this intervention amount to but the shot my father fired at that free, unknowing bird as it perched on the bough? . . . After the scene, it was possible that I might regain control of my wife; but I should find her shattered and lifeless in my arms like the bird which my father had placed in my hand so that I might throw it into the shooting bag.”
It is evident that Moravia’s skillful use of flashback connects the present with the past, highlighting the theme of the formative influence of past events on the present.
B. Discussion of the second element of style
The opening of this paragraph serves as a topic sentence to start the discussion of Moravia’s second stylistic element.
In his second notable stylistic element, Moravia has chosen his images judiciously to elicit the desired response from the reader. When he describes the narrator’s traumatic experience involving his father’s shooting a wild bird, Moravia selects imagery which has been cited already to dramatize the destruction of wildness. In that passage, the image of the end of the warm and soft life of the bird in this sensitive boy’s own hands and the image of this fatally wounded bird’s “dangling, shattered head crowned with a plume of already-thickening blood” are so overpoweringly vivid that they leave their imprint on the narrator’s as well as the reader’s mind. This description creates antipathy for the hunter and sympathy for the hunted. It also puts us on the side of the shocked boy.
Some other notable images in the story relate to the author’s evoking in the reader a feel for the notion of wildness:
“. . . my wife . . . was just as wild as the solitary quail hopping forward along a sun-filled furrow. . . . wild to such a degree that sometimes, when I went into our bedroom, the smell of her, floating in the air, would have something of the acrid quality of a wild beast’s lair.”
Whereas the first cluster of words engages the reader’s visual sense, the second image (a simile) appeals strongly to the sense of smell. Together these two images give us a feel for what, in the author’s opinion, wildness is. It is the author’ choice of images that makes us feel (instead of just telling us in an abstract manner) that central to his concept of wildness are autonomy, unpredictability, and an almost animal-like, innocent, and instinctive mingling with natural elements.
Still another memorable image (in the form of a metaphor, followed by a simile) used by Moravia is in the context of conveying to us the excitement felt by the narrator’s wife at the moment of her lover’s passionate kiss:
“I looked at that long, thick mane of brown hair, which as she leaned back fell free of her shoulders, and I felt at that moment her vitality reached its diapason, just as happens with wild animals when they couple and their customary wildness is redoubled by the violence of love.”
The subsequent simile – comparing the uninhibited, wild behavior of the two lovers with the mating of two free animals – completes the job of successfully capturing and communicating, in the author’s own words, the “biological tension,” the “existential excitement,” and “vital effervescence,” which this woman feels and which, through Moravia’s imagery, even the reader may experience vicariously.
Imagistic writing is fuller and richer than discursive writing because instead of just engaging our intellect, it also appeals to our sensory perceptions, thereby making us experience the otherwise abstract concepts and enabling us to see, taste, smell, hear, and almost touch the objects being described.
C. Discussion of the third element of style
This topic sentence introduces the discussion of the author’s third element of style mentioned in the thesis paragraph.
Moravia’s third stylistic device to be discussed in this essay is a series of contrasts used to indicate approval or disapproval and thus make the reader feel the author’s attitude. Of the numerous contrasts in the story, the following deserve special mention: contrast between the narrator and his father; contrast between wildness and tameness and contrast between acting as a free individual and acting according to prescribed norms. In each of these contrasts, the first of the two contrasting elements is made to look desirable and worthy of emulation.
In the first contrast, the author portrays the narrator as sensitive and vulnerable, whereas the narrator’s father is presented as a hunter untroubled by any soft feelings toward wildlife that he destroys. The father seems proud of the fact that he has shot the bird because he puts the dead bird in the narrator’s hand in an attempt to either impress him or break him in as a hunter. However, holding of the dead bird in his hands traumatizes the narrator, and he decides never to participate in any hunting ever again.
The second contrast is between wildness and tameness. It does not take much effort to realize that the author definitely and openly approves of wildness while pitying and ridiculing tame behavior. The free, independent, and unpredictable movements of a quail are pitched against the automaton-like, dependent, and predictable existence of a hen:
“Gradually she [the narrator’s wife] became less wild, tamer. I had had a fox, a quail, in the house; . . . then one day I realized that I had a hen. What effect does a hen have on someone who watches it? It has the effect of being, so to speak, an automaton in the form of a bird; automatic are the brief, rapid steps with which it moves about; automatic its hard, terse pecking; automatic the glance of the round eyes in its head that nods and turns; automatic its ready crouching down under the cock; automatic the dropping of the egg wherever it may be and the cry with which it announces that the egg has been laid. Good-boy to the fox; good-bye to the quail.”
The author makes his point about wildness versus tameness absolutely clear in the following contrast: “And her smell – this no longer brought to my mind, in any way, the innocent odor of a wild animal; rather I detected in it the chemical suavity of some ordinary French perfume.”
The author’s third and last contrast between the narrator’s individualistic (and hence praiseworthy) conduct as opposed to the conventional behavior is subtle. In the middle section of the story, the narrator has been presented as “chasing” his wife, who, after a long period of hen-like tame behavior, is showing the old flicker of wildness unaware of the fact that her husband is watching or chasing her. The entire middle section of the story, in fact, recreates, through an analogy, the shooting scene with which the story opened. The only difference is that instead of his father chasing wild life, here we have the narrator chasing his wife. The real contrast is presented at the end: Unlike his father, whose chase ended in the shooting of the wild bird, the narrator’s chase ends with his decision not to destroy the wildness of his wife with the commonly expected violent intervention in the course of her rendezvous with her lover.
A long time ago, John Dryden said that contraries, when placed together, enhanced each other. This observation is true of the function of the artistic use of contrast in “The Chase” because the opposites in each of the three contrasts do intensify each other and thus also result in clearer articulation of the author’s attitude toward each of the contrapuntal elements.
CONCLUSION
Moravia’s style of writing has enabled him to create a highly readable and moving story, in which the reader’s interest never flags but continues to rise until the exciting finish. His use of flashback is a particularly happy choice because this stylistic device blends naturally with the theme of the formative influence of the important events of a person’s past on his present conduct. No less effective is the author’s imagery in engaging the reader’s senses to ensure his/her full involvement in the action of the story to the extent that the reader feels like an active participant in the story’s events, not a passive observer. Finally, Moravia puts the old device of contrast to an impressive use in displaying the characteristics of the contrasted elements and, in the process, revealing his own attitude.