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: One of the things that Hemingway learned from the Imagist Poets when he lived in Paris in the 20's was that the form of the words in a story could convey meaning as well as the meaning of the words. For example, ee cummings did notuse capital letters or punctuation as a way of showing that he was divorcing is own work from the work that had come beofre. He also wrote a little poem called Grasshopper where the words seemed to be placed all over the page, but they actually mimiced the grasshopper hopping. : So whith this in mind, look at the first sentence of Fathers and Sons... : There had been a sign to detour in the center of the main street : of this town, but cars had obviously gone through, so, beliving it : was some repair which had been completed, Nicholas Adams drove on : through the town along the empty, brick-paved street, stopped by : traffic lights that flashed on and off on this traffic-less Sunday, : and would be gone next year when the payments on the system were not : met; on under the heavy trees of the small town, that are a part of : your heart if it is your town and you have walked under them, but that : are only too heavy, that shut out the sun and that dampen the houses for a stranger; out past the last house and unto the highway that rose and fell straight away ahead with banks of red dirt sliced cleanly away and the second-growth timber on both sides." : Next in the story, Nick will notice a field, think how it would be a : good place to hunt, think of hunting with his father, think how he : learned about hunting from his father, how his father's keen eyesight : made him a good shot, his father's features, the less than handsome : features, his opinion that his father was a coward, and how his father, : when asked about sex, prevaricated. : We have probably all done this, seen something which reminds us of : another thing which reminds us of a third which reminds us of a fourth, : until we end up thinking of something totally unrelated to the first : thought. This is what that first big, compound sentence is doing, but : not only with words describing one thing (the detour) and then another : thing and then another as Nick drives along. But the *form* of the : sentence emphasizes, or re-emphasizes, what is going on. It is really a : sentence fragment followed by a clause then another clause, then : another, then another, then another, until it ends. If the thought : describes a kind of meander around the town which will parallel Nick's : thoughts, then all of this is re-inforced by the form of the opening : sentence. Rather than using several short, unadorned individual : sentences which would tend to stop-start-stop the reader's progress, Hemingway used related clauses which flow more smoothly, one into another, as Nick's : revery does. : hth : Pjk : :

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