6.11 Experiential writing
In the experiential, writers express what is happening in terms of processes (verbs) and participants (nouns). They can make use of word and group level grammar, verbs and verb groups, adverbials, and sentence level grammar. Writers make deliberate choices from these language resources to represent a specific experience(s) which is (are) being recorded in the novel.
Let us examine the passage below in the context from which it is drawn
Preamble:
The passage below is taken from The Time of the Peacock by Mena Abdullah and Ray Mathew. It is actually the opening paragraphs of the first chapter and introduces the reader to the main character, Nimmi. She is a very young Australian girl whose parents are Punjabi Muslims, immigrants to Australia, and have settled on a farm on the Gwydir River in northern New South Wales. At first it is a very enclosed world composed of the mother and father, Rashida and Lal and Nimmi (a little girl), and baby Jamila. The passage below describes the Indo-Australian setting into which the narrator was born on an Australian farm (field). She is reflecting back on circumstances and events (mode) and describes her sheltered, happy family life (tenor). The context of culture is Indian superimposed on an Australian background. The narrator is remembering stories of Krishna; she is counting the number of her toes in Hindi; she is running around in a garden of Kashmiri roses and the scent of jasmine. The peacock’s name is Shah-Jehan, named after a former great Muslim leader, and the narrator addresses her mother as Ama, the Indian equivalent of mother. This is an Indian world set on the Gwydir River, a place where the dingo’s howl is heard on winter nights.
Pages 1-2
When I was little everything was wonderful; the world was our farm and we were all loved. Rashida and Lal and I, Father and our mother, Ama: we love one another and everything turned to good.
I remember in autumn, how we burned the great baskets of leaves by the Gwydir and watched the fires burning in the river while Ama told us stories of Krishna, the Flute-player and his moving mountains. And when the fires had gone down and the stories were alive in our heads we threw cobs of corn into the fires and cooked them. One for each of us – Rashida and Lal and I, Father and our mother.
Winter I remember, when the frost bit and stung and the wind pulled our hair. At night by the fire in the warmth of the house, we could hear the dingoes howling.
Then it was spring and the good year was born again. The sticks of the
jasmine vine covered themselves with flowers.
One spring I remember was the time of the peacock when I learnt the word secret and
began to grow up. After that spring everything somehow was different,
was older. I was not little any more, and the baby came.
I had just learnt to count. I thought I could count anything. I counted fingers and toes, the steps and the windows, even the hills. But this day in spring the hills were wrong.
There should have been five. I knew that there should have been five. I counted them over and over – “Ek, Do, Tin, Panch” – but it was no good. There was one too many, a strange hill, a left-over. It looked familiar, and I knew it, but it made more than five and worried me. I thought of Krishna and the mountains that moved to protect the cowherds, the travellers lost because of them, and I was frightened because it seemed to me that our hills had moved.
I ran through the house and out into the garden to tell Ama the thing that Krishna had done and to ask her how we could please him. But when I saw her, I forgot all about them; I was as young as that. I just stopped and jumped, up and down.
She was standing there, in her own garden, the one with the Indian flowers, her own little walled-up country. Her hands were joined together in front of her face, and her lips were moving. On the ground, in front of the Kashmiri rosebush, in front of the tuberoses, in front of the pomegranate-tree, she had placed little bowls of shining milk. I jumped to see them. Now I knew why I was running all the time and skipping, why I wanted to sing out and to count everything in the world.
“It is spring,” I shouted to Ama. “Not nearly-spring! Not almost-spring! But
really- spring! Will the baby come soon?” I asked her. “Soon?”
“Soon, Impatience, soon.”
I laughed at her and jumped up and clapped my hands together over the top of my head.
“I am as big as that,” I said. “I can do anything.” And I hopped on one leg to the end of the garden where the peacock lived. “Shah-Jehan!” I said to him - that was his name. “It is spring and the baby is coming, pretty Shah Jehan.” But he didn’t seem interested. “Silly old Shah Jehan,” I said, “Don’t you know anything? I can count ten.”
Analysis and comment:
Let us examine the sentence level grammar in the passage above and see how it is operating. (See table below for the recorded frequencies of simple sentences, compound sentences and complex sentences.) There are two paragraphs at the end of the passage which express at clause level the relationship between the little girl and her mother.
|
Para.1 |
Para. 2 |
Para. 3 |
Para. 4 |
Para.5 |
Para.6 |
Para.7 |
Para.8 |
Para.9 |
Simple sentences |
0 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
3 |
Compound sentences |
2 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
Complex sentences |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
Complex/ |
0 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
In the above passage we can see how the writers, through the careful selection of all four types of sentences, give a vivid account through Nimmi’s eyes of Nimmi’s childhood world and its meaning to her.
In paragraph one the time is highlighted by the opening time clause: “When I was little”. The main character in the story, Nimmi, is reminiscing. This opening clause is the topic of the paragraph, namely, early childhood years. It is immediately followed by the main idea: “Everything was wonderful.” This feeling of wonder is carried over by the immediate use of a compound sentence: “The world was our farm and we were all loved.” The writer further adds to the idea of wonder by yet another compound sentence: “Rashida and Lal and I, Father and our mother, Ama: we loved one another and everything turned to good”. She is setting up a world lacking complexity and uses the compound sentences with their almost childlike repetition of the conjunction “and” to increase the idea of the wonderful life in which there were secure family relationships.
In paragraph two the writers, through Nimmi, who is perceiving and remembering, pick up the last idea in paragraph one: “everything turned to good”. With the use of two compound/complex sentences, they thus allow Nimmi to paint an idyllic scene of familial happiness which seems to flow from one action to another. The main idea: “I remember one autumn” triggers a wealth of memories of baskets of leaves burning on the river, Ama’s stories of Krishna, the cooking of cobs on the dying fires. The verb, remember, projects the speaker into a world of the past which is evoked with the use of two noun clauses: “how we burned the great baskets of leaves by the Gwydir and [how we] watched the fires burning in the river.” The immediate use of a time clause (while…) after the two compounded noun clauses conveys Ama’s simultaneous action of telling her Krishna tales as the fires were burning. The three actions remain inextricably linked in the writer’s memory. The writers then begin the next compound/complex sentence with “and”. It is an unusual use of the word which is strictly a conjunction but here it is used as a connective and so extends the memories recorded in the previous sentence with further actions that happened at that time and in that place. The achievement of a gentle drifting into the past comes with: “when the fires had gone down and the stories were alive in our heads” and opens the way for the moment the cobs were thrown on the fire. The “together-ness” of the family is here embodied. Note how each member is mentioned: “Rashida and Lal and I, Father and our mother.”
In paragraph three, a short paragraph, a further cameo of the memories is captured. The inversion of the word order in the clause: “Winter, I remember” highlights a movement of time and allows for the verb, “remember” immediately to precede the two following time clauses. Again, with this verb we are projected into the past and the use of the two time clauses records the bitter cold and uncomfortable wind of long ago. The last sentence, with its meaning of snugness, overtakes the cold discomfort outside. It speaks of warmth in the house and a sense of security from “the dingoes howling”. The writers through Nimmi’s eyes have maintained the idea of a “wonderful” world heard about in the first paragraph.
The short paragraph four acts like a transition from the natural dreariness of winter to the excitement of spring. “Then it was spring and the good year was born again. The use of a compound sentence to announce the coming of spring and the renewal of life gives a natural flow reflecting the meaning contained in the sentence. Once more the last sentence in the paragraph stresses the transforming wonder of spring already expressed in the opening sentence: “The sticks of the jasmine vine covered themselves with flowers”.
In paragraph five the writers through Nimmi’s voice again begin by using an inversion and so highlight one particular spring. and in doing so allow Nimmi to trigger memories of learning and growing up contained in the compounding of two time clauses. Two simple sentences in the middle of the paragraph explain the learning and growing up: “After that spring everything somehow was different, was older”. The simplicity of these two statements preserves the childlike stance from which the Nimmi saw her world. Furthermore, they flow so readily into the final compound sentence in which she asserts she was, indeed, grown up and the new baby came to the family.
Paragraph six, a short paragraph, confirms the growing up belief of the little girl because she could count. Except for the second sentence which is complex and modifies Nimmi’s counting skills, the remaining three sentences are simple and reflect her growing self-confidence and how uncomplicated her thinking was.
Paragraph seven introduces much more complexity of thought particularly in the last sentence, a compound/complex structure, in which some of the stability of existence is lost because Nimmi thinks the mountains around her have moved. Nothing in life, up to this point, had changed. Now she is presented with the problem of having too many toes to fit in with her counting and the hills about the farm appearing to have moved. The simple sentence opening the paragraph: “There should have been five”, allows for the development of the dilemma re-stated in the complex sentence which immediately follows: “I knew that there should have been five” and then follows two compounded statements separated by a simple clause. The mixture of clauses reflects Nimmi’s bewilderment.
Paragraph eight opens with a very extended compound/complex sentence which traces Nimmi’s perplexed thoughts as she moves out to find her mother and a solution to her problems. This sentence is immediately followed by two complex sentences which reflect her true childlike mentality which does not dwell on problems for long. The moment she sees what her mother is doing, she forgets them and her mood changes to one of excitement, expressed in a final compound sentence: “I just stopped and jumped, up and down.”
The ninth paragraph is like a climax to the passage. It opens with a long, simple sentence which introduces Nimmi’s mother enclosed within her “little India”. Then the writer compounds this description with a compound sentence and then another long simple sentence. All three sentences act like a moving picture of the scene. More and more details are being added with each one. A short, simple sentence now follows which tells the reader Nimmi has solved her problems. In the following sentence, she elaborates on this thought with three noun clauses which hang on the verb, ‘knew’ which, in turn, acts as a projector into this outburst of complexity, explaining Nimmi’s behaviour.
Now let us look at how the clause level grammar at the end of the passage which confirms the idyllic world which this little girl inhabits.
|
Nimmi |
Mother (Ama) |
Shah-Jehan |
Statements |
xxxxx |
x |
0 |
Questions |
xxx |
0 |
0 |
Exclamations |
xxxx |
0 |
0 |
These are two very one-sided conversations (mode) actually one is a monologue, which take place between Nimmi and her mother (Ama). The relationship is one of childlike trust of Nimmi in her mother (tenor); and a few moments later Nimmi is seen with the family peacock. The relationship here is one of proferred friendliness on Nimmi’s part but indifference on Shah Jehan’s (tenor). Nimmi exclaims that it is spring. Obviously her mother has told her that in the spring the new baby will arrive, so the child asks about the time of the baby’s arrival (field). The context of culture is Indian. The scene takes place in spring in a reproduced Indian garden in an Australian landscape where the mother is placing bowls of milk to honour Krishna and acknowledge her gratitude for his protection, a ritual which the child recognises as happening at the approach of spring. Both the mother and daughter obviously live and move in a cycle governed by Indian religious traditions.
It is evident that Nimmi is dominating the scene. Except for her mother’s single reply to her daughter’s question about the baby’s arrival, only Nimmi’s voice is heard making the statements, asking the questions and giving vent to her wonderful feelings of excitement and energy. It is her moment and Ama allows her to have it, and just very affectionately labels her effusive daughter as ‘Impatience’.
Nimmi’s effusiveness spills over as she hops to the end of the garden path to speak with (mode) the beautiful but aloof Shah-Jehan (tenor). She wants him to know that the baby is coming but is disgusted by his lack of interest. She is jubilant, however, that she can count and therefore is probably quite superior to him (field).
The writers through the sentence and clause level grammar have succeeded in conveying a very special and unusual context of situation, a situation of Indian sub-continental family life superimposed on Australian soil. The scene has been set for a story in which this family has to learn how to make its place in a foreign land where the Indian children are dubbed ‘niggers’ and outsiders but where it happily pursues its Indian culture amid Australian contacts.