ENGLISH 12 UNIT 7 Emotion, Humor and Sentimentality
 All successful stories arouse some sort of emotion in the reader.
 These emotions run the gambit from fear, excitement, horror,
suspense, anxiety, exultation, surprise, sadness, happiness, joy.
 Some stories also make us laugh, which is always a good thing.
Note: If a story is to be truly significant it must pursue emotion
indirectly, not directly.
 Emotion, to the interpretive writer is the by-product, not the goal of
the story.
 Genuine emotion, like character, must be presented indirectly and
must be dramatized over the course of the story.
 This writer must produce emotion which is accompanied by insight.
 The discriminating reader distinguishes between contrived emotion
and that which springs naturally from a human story truly told.
Sentimentality
 This is the quality in a story which aims at drawing forth fake,
unmerited tender feeling.
 Sentimentality is not the same as genuine emotion, as it is contrived,
excessive or faked.
 A story contains “genuine” emotion when it treats life faithfully and
perceptively.
 The sentimentalized story has its sole goal in making you feel emotion
rather than helping to understand the emotion or offering insight.
 The sentimentalized story oversimplifies and sweetens life to get its
feelings across.
 It exaggerates, manipulates and prettifies its subject matter to obtain
the desired response.
 Tears here are mixed with sugar.
 The sentimental writer tries to make words do what the situation
faithfully presented by itself will not do.
 To accomplish this emotional effect the writer uses heightened and
distended language.
Note: A kiss here is never a kiss as it is two roses petals meeting in the
morning dew.
 The sentimental writer will also use excessively selective use of
detail.
 The honest writer uses representative detail to tell the story while the
sentimentalist uses detail that all clearly point to the desired
sentimental outcome.
 Here the goal is producing emotion rather than conveying truth.
Ie. The person who dies in the tear jerker will always be shown to be
sweet, uncomplaining, loving and cheerful under adversity. Never as
naughty, rude or ungrateful.
Think of the mother fish in “ Finding Nemo”.
The sentimentalist writer almost always heightens and oversimplifies
reality.
 This writer relies heavily on stock responses that have little to do with
the actuality of the story.
 To get these stock responses look for stock materials such as young
love, patriotism, beauty and bravery.
 For this writer every cloud has a silver lining as virtue is always
rewarded, the villain defeated (Dangerous Game) and the sun shines
through in the conclusion.
Note: Here you can see how this type of sentimentalist writing is
essentially escapist in nature.
Mature Reader
This type of reader looks for emotion to be a by-product of the story line
not the end product.
Emotion is gained by honestly portrayed characters acting in honestly
portrayed situations.
These situations reflect the complexity, ambiguity and endless variety of
life.