Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [99]
The fourth woman, who stands third from the left in line, tucked in among the others who look very much alike, wears a banner reading york. This woman’s appearance is different in just about every respect from the other three. Whereas they are blonde with long flowing hair, she is dark with her hair up in a tight bun. Whereas their mouths are wide open, revealing a wall of very white teeth, her mouth is closed, lips drawn together. Whereas their eyes are wide open and staring, hers, like her mouth, are nearly closed, under deeply arched eyebrows.
The dark woman’s lips and eyes and hair are dark. She wears dark eye makeup and has a pronounced dark beauty mark on her cheek. Whereas the other three women’s cheeks are high and round, hers are sharply angular. The three blonde women wear one-piece bathing suits in a nondescript gray color. The dark-haired woman, whose skin stands out in stark contrast to her hair, wears a two-piece bathing suit, exposing her midriff. Like her face, the dark-haired woman’s breast, sticking out in half profile in her bathing suit, is pointed and angular. The other three women’s breasts are round and quietly contained in their high-necked gray bathing suits.
FIGURE 6.2 “The Competition” by Ian Falconer
Artwork by Ian Falconer/The New Yorker © 2000 Conde Naste Publications Inc.
Using the Method to Identify Patterns of Repetition and Contrast
As we discussed in Chapter 2, looking for patterns of repetition and contrast (aka The Method) is one of your best means of getting at the essential character of a subject. It will prevent you from generalizing, instead involving you in hands-on engagement with the details of your evidence. Step 1, looking for things that repeat exactly, tends to suggest items for step 2, repetition of the same or similar kinds of words or details (strands), and step 2 leads naturally to step 3, looking for binary oppositions and organizing contrasts.
Here are our partial lists of exact repetitions and strands and binary oppositions in the New Yorker cover:
Some Details That Repeat Exactly
Large, wide open, round eyes (3 pairs)
Long, blonde, face-framing hair (3)
Small, straight eyebrows (3 pairs)
Wide-open (smiling?) mouths with expanses of white teeth (3)
(but individual teeth not indicated)
banners (4) but each with different lettering
round breasts (3)
states that end in a (3)
Some Strands (groups of the same or similar kinds of details)
Lots of loose and flowing blonde hair/large, fully open, round eyes/large, open, rather round (curved) mouths:
Connecting logic = open, round
Skin uniformly shaded on three of the figures/minimal color and shading contrasts/mouths full of teeth but just a mass of white without individual teeth showing:
Connecting logic = homogenous, undifferentiated, indistinct
Binary Oppositions
Blonde hair/black hair
Open mouths/closed mouth
Straight eyebrows/slanted (arched) eyebrows
Round breasts/pointed breast
Covered midriff/uncovered midriff
Notice that we have tried hard to stick with “the facts” here—concrete details in the picture. If we were to try, for example, to name the expression on the three blonde women’s faces and the one on the black-haired woman (expressionless versus knowing? vapid versus shrewd? trusting versus suspicious? and so on), we would move from data gathering—direct observation of detail—into interpretation. The longer you delay interpretation in favor of noticing patterns of like and unlike detail, the more thoughtful and better grounded your eventual interpretation will be.
Anomalies
Miss New York
Pushing Observations to Conclusions: Selecting an Interpretive Context
As we argued throughout this chapter,