Fiction & Nonfiction

My love of the adjectives

My love of the adjectives

I just cannot do without the colorful words either in speaking or writing. Long descriptive passages from the masters of English Literature simply captivate my imagination. They weave a web of magic with fantasy, adventure and love. An old book in an evergreen style, which I consider a treasure chest of aptly used figures, is Montgomery’s “Anne of the green gables”. Anyone with a head for adjectives could be enslaved by her “scope for imagination.”

Take a look at this conversation wherein the writer made an appealing use of the adjective.
Anne Shirley: An imaginative, talkative, red-headed orphan who comes to live with Matthew Cuthbert and Marilla Cuthbert. Anne is very sensitive and is pathologically insecure about the color of her hair.
“"I'm pretty hungry this morning," she announced as she slipped into the chair Marilla placed for her.”The world doesn't seem such a howling wilderness as it did last night. I'm so glad it's a sunshiny morning. But I like rainy mornings real well, too. All sorts of mornings are interesting, don't you think? You don't know what's going to happen through the day, and there's so much scope for imagination. But I'm glad it's not rainy today because it's easier to be cheerful and bear up under affliction on a sunshiny day. I feel that I have a good deal to bear up under. It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?"
"For pity's sake hold your tongue," said Marilla. "You talk entirely too much for a little girl."

Here is an example of Mark Twain’s use of adjectives, which I find is creative and apt.
“Oh, this human life, this earthy life, this weary life! It is so groveling, and so mean; its ambitions are so paltry, its prides so trivial, its vanities so childish; and the glories that it values and applauds -- lord, how empty! - (The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain)


So it is with the puranas or epics of India such as The RAMAYANA and THE MAHABHARATA. With epic style and the linguistic adornments in place, they persuade me to willingly suspend disbelief and travel to the land of ancient India where beautiful and chaste women and tall, handsome men lived. Their righteous attitude and behavior though incredible are so well exemplified that they appear quite relevant to the contemporary society. They epitomize both virtues and vices. Thus the Pandava princes, the five brothers in the Mahabharata are representations of justice, skill, strength, beauty and splendor. The Kauravas, their evil-minded cousins, on the other hand, stand for greed, envy, jealousy and possessiveness.  The dramatization and presentation of the eternal struggle between the powers of darkness and light is picturesque, impressive and thought provoking.

To return to my own reality, today, the landscape I found during my early morning walk into the nearby woods surrounded by a range of linear granite hills, breathtaking. Clichés or not I cannot help using adjectives like the rising glorious sun behind the veil of tall trees to describe my experience of first light. There is shady darkness under tall trees. The coolness and the mild heat mixed with the delicious fragrance of the unknown wild flowers wafting on the wind by the mountainside lent a feeling of happiness to me.