Craft Table for The Giver by Lois Lowry Craft Moves Page Numbers Explanations Sentence fragments 72B, 74T, 76 B, 78T, 85M Short paragraphs 74M-B, 75T, 84B, 85T Dashes 73T, 74B, 75M, 78T, 81M,82T Prepositional Phrase 74T, 80T, 81T, 81B Sentence fragments as used by Lowry help give the idea more emphasis or to reiterate a point clearly. On page 74, the author speaks of the pieces of furniture in the room and says that each piece is “clearly defined.” She then proceeds to list off each piece of furniture in its own sentence fragment. This is done to emphasize the idea that each piece is clearly defined by putting it in its own sentence. On pages 76 and 78, the sentence fragment provides more explanation to the sentence before it but also allowing it to be its own sentence makes it more dramatic and forces the reader pay more attention to it. Lowry does this quite often throughout the novel: there are usually at least one or two short paragraphs on each page. Some of these paragraphs only consist of one sentence. Page 74 is a great example of her use of the shorter paragrahps. Each paragraph change is done to show a change of emphasis. The ideas of these paragraphs all are about the books on the wall of the Giver’s office, but a different part is emphasized in each paragraph: books in houses, amount of books, and content of books. I think Lowry does an exceptional job with this, but a novice writer must be careful not to over use this, as it could potentially make the novel too “choppy.” Dashes are used in this book for their common grammatical usage- interrupting statements. However, I feel that Lowry uses them quite frequently. It gives off the idea that these characters (as these dashes are often used in conversation) are real, are human. It makes them sounds as though they aren’t perfect and they too have interrupting thoughts, or need to go back and clarify themselves. It makes the conversations sound informal, common, and relatable. However, if your goal was to make conversations sound formal and the characters more distant, dashes would not be the best form of punctuation to use. The prepositional phrases in these pages are used to provide more description on “how” or “where.” They give the reader more details of a particular event and help them to get a better sense of what is going on. For example, Lowry will write that “The bed, in an alcove at the far end of the room, was draped….” Using a prepositional phrase set off by commas will make the sentence flow better instead of saying something like: “The bed that was in an alcove…” The main point of these phrases is to provide more information and Lowry does it in a way that adds to the flow of the sentence. Lowry uses a mix of longer and shorter sentences within the same paragraph. This act provides a certain emphasis on the short sentences and a de-emphasis on the longer sentences. For example, the Giver asks if Jonas can see that the Giver has been the Receiver for a long time. The following sentence is: “Jonas nodded.” Then after, the author goes into a description of what Jonas notices about the Giver and provides clues about his age. However, the short sentence “Jonas nodded” helps us to first quickly understand that Jonas recognizes the age of the Giver. The longer sentences give the descriptions and background information, while the shorter sentences pull out the important points. Short sentences contrasted with longer sentences 75B, 85T, 85B, 86T