6.15 Further work on adjectivals and adverbials
Read the following passage and compare it with the one that follows.
Passage One:
At first he was a sight. He couldn’t keep his balance. But he grew. His beak was open and pointing, waiting for his mother or father to drop something into it. A beetle, maybe, or a worm, or grub. His beak was a beak.
Passage Two:
At first he was a disgusting sight, naked
and floppy, with big bald head and little useless wings. He couldn’t even keep his balance properly
when he was sitting in the nest. But he grew very
quickly. His beak
was always open and pointing upwards, waiting for his mother or father to drop
something into it. A beetle, maybe, or a worm, or a soft fat grub. His
beak was a hungry, noisy beak, stretching
higher than his sister’s and gobbling everything quicker than a wink.
(Colin Thiele: Magpie Island, pp.1-2)
Note: how all the nouns in the passage come alive, as it were, with the addition of the adjectivals which add dramatic information, either factual or the writer’s opinion. In the first place, the word, ‘sight’ now becomes ‘disgusting’ and ‘naked and floppy’. Then the addition of the adjectival phrases, ‘with big bald head and [with] little useless wings’ completes the picture of a very bedraggled fledgling beginning life, literally without feathers and little dignity. Then the adverbials either strengthen the meaning of the verbs, such as: ‘couldn’t even keep his balance properly’ and ‘he grew very quickly’ and his beak ‘was always open’ and ‘pointing upward.’ They tell us of manner, time and place. The grub becomes a tasty morsel for the young bird with the two adjectives, ‘big fat’. Finally, the liveliness of the bird and its insatiable appetite are painted so clearly with the adjectivals in the last sentence: ‘His beak was a hungry, noisy beak, [which was stretching higher than his sister’s and [which was] gobbling everything quicker than a wink.’
It is obvious that the adjectivals and the adverbials transform what seems a very mundane statement into something of interest. The first rendition of the passage with the adjectivals and adverbials erased makes for very ordinary prose but Thiele’s actual piece of writing, found in the second passage, is rich with appropriate choices of adjectivals and adverbials and draws the reader in, enabling him/her to know exactly what the fledgling looked like and what it was doing with its body and beak.