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