the 3 poles of description

7/29/2019 The 3 Poles of Description

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The Three Poles of

Description

The Three Poles of Description


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Aldous HuxleyEssays belong to a literary species whose

extreme variability can be studied most

effectively within a three-poled frame of

reference. There is the pole of the 1) personal

and the autobiographical; there is the pole ofthe 2) objective, the factual, the concrete-

particular; and there is the pole of the 3)

abstract-universal.



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1) Personal, autobiographical

I like that butterfly

2) Objective, factual, concrete-particular

Its actually a moth, Lucerne Moth, Nomophila

nearctica

3) Abstract, universal Does knowledge increase appreciation? To name a

thing is to know it, to value it as distinct from others in

its order and class. But is the moth, wrongly called,

less seen? Does a person without language see less. Iremember learning the names of trees [comes back

to autobiographical]



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Pole 1: Personal & Autobiographical

a. The physical dimensionsthe seen, heard,smelled, tasted, and touched.

I guess I remembered clearest of all the earlymornings, when the lake was cool andmotionless, remembered how the bedroomsmelled of the lumber it was made of and of

the wet woods whose scent entered throughthe screen.

From Once More to the Lake

http://www.freewebs.com/lanzbom/EBWhiteLakeEssay.pdfhttp://www.freewebs.com/lanzbom/EBWhiteLakeEssay.pdf


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On afternoons when he came home from work sober,

we flung ourselves at him for hugs, and felt against our

ribs the telltale lump in his coat. In the barn wetumbled on the hay and heard beneath our sneakers

the crunch of buried glass. We tugged open a drawer in

his workbench, looking for screwdrivers or crescent

wrenches, and spied a gleaming six-pack among thetools. Playing tag, we darted around the house just in

time to see him sway on the rear stoop and heave a

finished bottle into the woods. In his good night kiss we

smelled the cloying sweetness of Clorets, the mints he

chewed to camouflage his dragon's breath.From Under the Influence.
http://jmsc.hku.hk/courses/jmsc6025spring2012/files/2012/01/Scott-Sanders-Under-the-Influence.pdfhttp://jmsc.hku.hk/courses/jmsc6025spring2012/files/2012/01/Scott-Sanders-Under-the-Influence.pdf


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Personal & Autobiographical (cont.)

b. The psychological/emotional dimensions

the regretted, feared, doubted, hoped for,

longed for, ashamed of, questioned

Such waltzing was hard, terribly hard for with a

boy's scrawny arms I was trying to hold my tipsy

father upright. From Under the Influence.

Note: this quote alludes to

the poem My Fathers Waltz.

http://jmsc.hku.hk/courses/jmsc6025spring2012/files/2012/01/Scott-Sanders-Under-the-Influence.pdfhttp://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172103http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172103http://jmsc.hku.hk/courses/jmsc6025spring2012/files/2012/01/Scott-Sanders-Under-the-Influence.pdf


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States of mind and emotional intensities

are often described through metaphor.

Crouching in the dark corner of the basement[.] Wailing, screaming, the saddest melody youveever heard, the animal cries until the flood of tearsuntil the crashing waves mate and divide, growinginto a wall that crashes down, pulling the animaldown to the deepest depths. There is no air downthere. Only the suffocating waters that pour intothe lungs making it blissfully hard to fight for life.

The dark of midnight, the silence of nothingenvelopes it like a warm and welcoming blanket.

--From a past student writer



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Mother watched him go with arms crossed over her

chest, her face closed like the lid on a box of snakes.

After a scene in Under the Influence

when the father leaves home (again)



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Another metaphor

The secret bores under the skin, gets in the blood,

into the bone, and stays there. Long after you have

supposedly been cured of malaria, the fever can

flare up, the tremors can shake you. So it is with thefevers of shame. You swallow the bitter quinine of

knowledge, and you learn to feel pity and

compassion toward the drinker. Yet the shame

lingers in your marrow, and, because of the shame,anger.

From Under the Influence.



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Pole 2: Objective & Factual

The expository dimensionsdefinitions, facts

history, background, myths, descriptions of

processes and phenomena (natural cycles,

forces of nature, how machinery works.)

Read Whites paragraph that begins Peace and

goodness and jollity page 4. Here is part:



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My boy loved our rented outboard, and his great desire was to achievesingle-handed mastery over it, and authority, and he soon learned the trickof choking it a little (but not too much), and the adjustment of the needlevalve. Watching him I would remember the things you could do with the oldone-cylinder engine with the heavy flywheel, how you could have it eating

out of your hand if you got really close to it spiritually. Motor boats in thosedays didn't have clutches, and you would make a landing by shutting off themotor at the proper time and coasting in with a dead rudder. But there wasa way of reversing them, if you learned the trick, by cutting the switch andputting it on again exactly on the final dying revolution of the flywheel sothat it would kick back against compression and begin reversing.Approaching a dock in a strong following breeze, it was difficult to slow upsufficiently by the ordinary coasting method, and if a boy felt he hadcomplete mastery over his motor, he was tempted to keep it runningbeyond its time and then reverse it a few feet from the dock. It took a coolnerve, because if you threw the switch a twentieth of a second too soon youwould catch the flywheel when it still had speed enough to go up pastcenter, and the boat would leap ahead, charging bull-fashion at the dock.

An amazingly detailed description of how to dock aboat that has an old one-cylinder engine. Can youadd a description of a process to your piece?



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Examples from Under the Influence

The Biblical story of the lunatic and the swine is retold (page738). Followed by this reflection on it:

Hearing the story in Sunday school, my friends thoughtmainly of the pigs. (How big a splash did they make?Who paid for the lost pork?) But I thought of theredeemed lunatic, who bathed himself and put onclothes and calmly sat at the feet of Jesus, restored-sothe Bible said-to "his right mind.

When drunk, our father was clearly in his wrong

mind. [returns here to his own life, the autobiographicalpole]From Under the Influence.



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Pole 3: Abstract & Universal

The abstract, non-physical dimensionthe reflected upon, thewondered about, the questioned. Deep thinking. Reaching out with themind for new connections.

Includes

Epiphanies Discussions of values, morals, ethics

Realizations that were connected to a group of people, to all humanity, tonatural cycles, to mystery.

May be blended with Emotions in reaction to above, and so pole 1-b, the

psychological/emotional

Stories and myths (pole 2)



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I saw the dragonfly alight on the tip of my rod

as it hovered a few inches from the surface of

the water. It was the arrival of the fly that

convinced me beyond any doubt that

everything was as it always had been, that theyears were a mirage and that there had been

no years.

an insight that reaches beyond the particular to

affirm a universal truth (Charles Phillips).

http://www.moonstar.com/~acpjr/Blackboard/Common/Webdocs/WhiteLake.htmlhttp://www.moonstar.com/~acpjr/Blackboard/Common/Webdocs/WhiteLake.html


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Blending of all poles(especially 1 and 3)

A stillness settles in my heart and is carried to my hand [pole 1someone doing something]. It is the quietude of resolve layered overfear [pole 3, abstract]. And it is this resolve that lowers us, my knifeand me, deeper and deeper into the person beneath. It is an entry intothe body that is nothing like a caress; still, it is among the gentlest ofacts. [Pole 3, what IS surgery] Then stroke and stroke again, and we are

joined by other instruments, hemostats and forceps, until the woundblooms with strange flowers whose looped handles fall to the sides insteely array. [pole 2, slightly: describes the process of surgery]

You turn aside to wash your gloves. [pole 1, person doing something] Itis a ritual cleansing. One enters this temple doubly washed. Here isman as microcosm, representing in all his parts the earth, perhaps theuniverse. [Pole 3 big time: the body represents the whole universe]

From surgeon Richard Selzersessay The Knife

http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/english3680/files/2009/01/richard-selzer-the-knife.pdfhttp://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/english3680/files/2009/01/richard-selzer-the-knife.pdf


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Bonus point questionup to 50 points

Even though it is rich in descriptions of the

personal and factual (poles 1 & 2), Once

More to the Lake is known for reaching for

the 3rd polethe abstract & universal. The

author realizes that, in a sense, nothing haschanged; the lake is the same, time really has

not passed at all.

In your opinion, does Under the Influenceever reach beyond the personal & factual and

try to describe what is abstract and universal?

Explain how and where, with quotes.The Three Poles of Description

the 3 poles of description

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