"Lots of Drops of Brandy" by The Chieftains and Their Talent for Coaxing

Today's literary concept: Coaxing.

There are two ways of educating people: hammer tactics, and magic tricks. Hammer tactics are things like dramatic demonstrations and perfectly outlined theses and stuff where argument and thought are impossible. Magic tricks are far more insidious.

To educate with a magic trick, the student must believe they came up with the answer themselves. They must be caught and led to an answer and feel like they figured it out half a moment before the teacher gives them the last detail.

Of course, sometimes the tactics are the same.

"Lots of Drops of Brandy" wasn't supposed to be the song of the day. The song of the day doesn't exist on youtube, though, so the literary concept is not very well supported.

"Far" by Coheed and Cambria Demonstrates Words Juxtaposed against Pictures

A continuation of thinking about irony.

When the scene has little to do with the words being said it produces a different effect than that produced by scene and words agreeing. Words and pictures impact us differently. Where words cause us to think and attempt to think in reasoned lines, pictures can evoke instinct, emotion, and ambiguity or diversity in conclusions. Which becomes interesting when the pictures are described in our stories. We require words to show the pictures. In scene setting, our attempt is always to generate some sense of solidity with the slippery words that we have selected as our tool.

Hopefully, our description seems solid. We might all describe the same castle. The stones--the grit--the icicles--hopefully, we all succeed in conveying the coarse, cold touch, immense silence, the chalky smell of mortar; hopefully we give a distinct image of castle. We might opt to use language that is vague, soft, weak. Hopefully, the objective image "castle" becomes communicated anyway, though we might leave the audience thinking about jello, or something.

It's a thought. The ambiguity of language is our tool. If you want to make an institution look philosophically weak and physically impregnable, you might describe their Nazi architectural style with soft-sounding syllables and ambiguous words. A strong description ought to give the objective solidity of scene setting and, through word choice, it ought also to juxtapose an ambiguity.

"Burn" by Three Days Grace on a Snowy Day

Today's literary concept: Irony. I know of irony that literary critics are impressed by good executions of it; I know that irony contributes to storytelling. I'm still exploring how. In order to do that, I'll try defining irony then start thinking about how it's used in literature.

Definition from the Oxford English Dictionry of "irony": A figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used; usually taking the form of sarcasm or ridicule in which laudatory expressions are used to imply condemnation or contempt.

This definition would seem to imply that irony, as a literary tool, can be used to provide a critique of just about anything. Successful irony, it would seem, comes about when an author might spend a great deal of time seeming to praise something, like cannibalism, while demonstrating how horrible it is. Scathing social criticism comes about through successful irony.

Or, perhaps like my song of the day, irony can be used to complain about weather. It's snowing here. I have a song about fire on the mind. Ironic, perhaps. Perhaps not, though.

I shall revisit the concept of irony. Fear not.

 Heralds updated: http://lithnmark.blogspot.com/2011/12/chapter-two-part-one.html