Tolstoy: The Kreutzer Sonata

In this novella, Tolstoy tells the story of an unhappy upper-class marriage almost solely through a character's spoken recollections. An unnamed narrator begins the story with his own present-tense descriptions of a train and its passengers, but the primary narrative is quickly taken over by the dialogue of one of these passengers--an old man who tells the story of how he got to the point of killing his wife in a fit of jealous rage. While recounting the failure of his marriage, the man also expounds on his theory that sex is the corrupter of pure relations between the genders, and "love" is only lust.

In terms of style, the story begins in the middle of the action ("It was early spring, and the second day of our journey"), with short, descriptive sentences. Characters who do not play a role in the main body of the story are introduced and carefully physically described, down to straight-forward details that don't seem particularly important ("he wore an astrakhan collar"). The narrator's motives and actions are equally as simply delivered ("It seemed to me that his loneliness depressed him, and I made several attempts to converse with him.") There are frequent paragraph breaks, often based on the passing of time, with some no longer than one complex sentence; this gives the story more of a forward-moving feeling. The inclusion of lots of non-vital actions ("The tradesman began by saying that was going on to his estate, which was only one station farther on...") makes the pace of the story feel more leisurely and credible--almost as though it were being told out loud. The narrator sometimes makes generalizations ("In the way all ladies have...") but generally does little more than relate the action.

Tolstoy uses a conversation about divorce, which takes place between several train passengers, to slowly introduce Pozdnyshev (the old man) who goes on to occupy the rest of the story; he interjects at one point in the conversation, and then goes on to speak exclusively to the narrator. In this way, Tolstoy adds to the leisurely pace of the story by letting it unfold naturally, as opposed to jumping straight to the main action--in this case, the story of Pozdnyshev's disastrous marriage.

Tolstoy's dialogue doesn't aim to sound realistic. The style of Pozdynshev's dialogue as he tells the story of his marriage is very similar to the style used by the narrator of "The Death of Ivan Ilych"when telling the story of Ivan's death; the only real difference is that Pozdynshev occasionally becomes theatrical at key points in his story and sometimes directly addresses the narrator, to whom he is speaking. When many different characters are speaking in the beginning of the story, Tolstoy uses adjectives and descriptions of their actions very selectively. When Pozdnyshev is speaking, he interrupts the dialogue only a few times for brief descriptions of action, and the narrator rarely speaks. Most interestingly and effectively, Pozdnyshev changes tenses and pronouns at different points in his story: when relating the action that led up to killing his wife he switches to the present tense, and when describing one instance of the frequent arguments he had with her he uses both present tense and the pronoun "you." Though he tells his story mostly in chronological order, he does allow for many tangents to describe his current philosophical stance on a particular issue that has come up, and very rarely allows for backward-looking tangents to further explain a particular phenomenon. The story comes to a close with a brief description by the narrator of Pozdnyshev's behavior and appearance as he ends his own story, and ends with yet another line of dialogue by him ("Yes, forgive me..." he said, repeating the same words with which he had concluded his story.")

Overall, it seems that Tolstoy focuses more on hammering home his own philosophy than on crafting a beautifully written story. However, the style he employs in "The Kreutzer Sonata" could definitely be useful for a story of my own in which I also want to focus on communicating some of my own morals and ideals.

Mary McCarthy: "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment"

Similarly to Hemingway, McCarthy begins her story after the action has already begun: her main character, a woman in the middle of an extramarital affair, expresses in the first paragraph that she is planning on bringing her affair into the open. Also like Hemingway, McCarthy doesn't give any of her characters names, but does bestow monikers on some of them based on their relations to her main character. She diverges from Hemingway by  capitalizing these monikers and using them as though they were given names; for example, the man her main character is having an affair with is referred to as "the Young Man." Along with descriptors used as character names, McCarthy also capitalizes certain events like "Telling Him" or "Public Appearances" in order to emphasize their importance to her main character.

McCarthy is completely different from Hemingway in that she covers a relatively long span of time (an entire affair) and tells the story exclusively through the lens of her main character's thoughts, rarely stepping back to objectively describe anything--be it another character, the setting, or an action. However, while she does relate most of these thoughts in the voice of her character, she uses the third person to do so. She states many of her character's feelings and motives in a straightforward way, such as when she says very simply: "...she was angry all the way because she was afraid there would be trouble with the conductor" (17). However, McCarthy frequently goes into detail and explores her protagonist's thoughts in terms of "one and "you" and "they," fully explaining her character's reasoning and following her entire line of thought. For example, while explaining why her character finds affairs pleasurable she writes, "One put one's family and one's friends off the track because one was still afraid that the affair might not come out right..." (3) and while relating her thoughts on marriage she writes, "Almost all women...when they are girls never believe that they will get married. The terror of spinsterhood hangs over them from adolescence on." (18). She also gets inside of her character's head by exploring hypotheticals that her character is considering, or by forecasting what she plans on doing. For example: "She could take an apartment by herself in the Village. She would meet new people. She would entertain," (19) or "It would probably be best, she decided, to say 'West' at first, with an air of vagueness and hesitation" (21). Like Hemingway in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," she ends her story by having her character forecast what she will do in a particular situation.

One of the nuances of McCarthy's writing that I found interesting was the addition of lots of side notes in each sentence, which sometimes gave important new information but sometimes were just synonyms for the previous statement. For example, in this sentence she adds on new information: "But what this interlude of deception gave her...was an opportunity, unparalleled in her experience, for..." (4). But in this sentence the additions don't necessarily add new meaning, and are more for effect: "no truism of his, no cliché, no ineffectual joke..." (10). I also particularly liked the effect produced by her interjection of "she thought" or "she said" or "she recognized" in the middle of a sentence, such as when she writes, "Not, she thought, because his impetuosities, his gaucheries, demonstrated the sincerity of his passion for her..." (5). Finally, I also appreciated her technique of listing several examples of something both to provide more explanation and also to sneak in descriptions of events: "To meet at a friend's house by design and to register surprise, to strike just the right note of young-matronly affection at cocktail parties, to treat him formally as "my escort" at the theater during intermissions..."

Ernest Hemingway

In order to better understand and imitate Ernest Hemingway’s style, I chose to focus on three of his best short stories: “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” “Hills Like White Elephants,” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” While I already knew that his signature style involves using as few words as possible, I hadn’t been aware of the more nuanced techniques that help him do this. 

Hemingway begins “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” in the middle of the action, and gradually reveals more of the situation at hand through dialogue between his two main characters. In his other two stories, he begins with a straightforward description of the setting and a surface explanation of the situation. 

Dialogue is important in all three stories but is pared down, and rarely paired with anything more than a “he said” or “she said;” Hemingway trusts readers to pick up on his characters’ emotions through the dialogue itself, and often uses this dialogue to express an important theme of the story. He does provide descriptions of the setting and the actions or motivations of a character, but they are always straightforward and are often broken up into short, blunt sentences. For example, in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” all he says about a particular interaction is: “The old man looked at him. The waiter went away,” and his simple explanation of a character’s acquiescence to another is: “He did not wish to be unjust. He was only in a hurry.” 

Hemingway also distances the reader from his characters by never using their names in his narration, even if another character has previously used their name in dialogue. Instead, he refers to his characters by some sort of surface-level trait, such as “the old man,” or “the waiter with a wife.” 

In “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” Hemingway divulges one characters’ stream of consciousness thoughts. He does this by first introducing that the character is thinking something, and then goes on to seamlessly integrate these thoughts with his narration. Since he uses a stream of consciousness approach for relating a character’s thoughts, Hemingway often includes questions, short sentences when the thoughts are disjointed and choppy, contradictions, and sometimes even  semi-colons to make some thoughts flow as naturally as they would in that character’s mind. I was particularly inspired by his ending to “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” in which he merges his character’s thoughts with his own narration in order to express what they will do later that evening.