Re: Chapter One

I mentioned to Ms. Crofts in an e-mail that students (you) would have a hard time with two language issues: first, Bronte's syntax; and the second, Joseph's dialect. Perhaps I'm not confident in your intellectual capabilities. Perhaps, as I've mentioned in class, I'm the stupid one, limited by my own intellectual limitations which I then hoist upon your young shoulders. I understand Bronte's language, rarely shifting to find a dictionary, and I get her syntax (the way she arranges words in a sentence), but then I've been doing this for a while. Joseph's language I have to read aloud, so that if you see me sitting at my desk and talking to myself in a cockney accent, it's just me being him. (That's a hint: when you read Joseph, or next year when you encounter Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, read his voice aloud, and listen, and you'll understand.) I've spieled enough. What do you think about these two language issues. Is Joseph's dialect a limitation to understanding? Do you find yourself reaching for a dictionary again and again? Do you often find yourself in a maze of Bronte's language, asking, by the end of the sentence, where is this going? Please respond to us or to others as comments are generated. Also, as a side note, this is a violent book: in the first chapter I've met a pack of angry pointers, a bunch of dead rabbits, and a surly, surly Heathcliff.