SHOW AND TELLING -- EXPOSITION AND NARRATION

 

 

EXPOSITION: Telling. Language of analysis, generalization, logic, explication, cause and effect, induction and deduction, reasoning. Language out of space and time -- abstract. No concrete description. The purpose of exposition is to provide information.

 

NARRATION: Showing. Description of events, action, places, people, things. Color words. concrete nouns, adjectives, verbs of physical action -- language tied to specific times and places. The purpose of narration is to create a dramatic or emotional effect.

 

FICTION USES EXPOSITION FOR SUPPORT, BUT IT USES NARRATION FOR EFFECT.

 

The following passage was written first in an expository manner then rewritten by adding specific detail.

 

EXPOSITORY:

 

I grew up in an atmosphere that was full of musical influence. My mother was a talented piano and bassoon player and had a beautiful operatic voice. She graduated with a Music Education degree as well as a performance degree. My father was a jazz buff and continually brought me into his "music room" to hear his latest records. I had a fantastic blend of classical and jazz, as well as an interest in rock. One of my sisters started taking piano lessons at the insistence of my mother. Her brilliant instructor claimed that she was an extremely talented musician. I went to her recitals and was amazed at her achievements. Soon I was coaxed into sacrificing Boy Scouts in order to take piano lessons, also. But, I just couldn't seem to be as dedicated....

 

 

NARRATIVE:

 

My mother sang in our church choir, where she was frequently asked to solo because she'd once been a contralto with the Chicago Metropolitan opera. My peers at play in the evenings on our block always eyed me a little oddly when my mother would come out to call me for supper and give my name the lyrical, melancholy peal of an opera matron grieving over a warrior killed in action. It was the same when she showered; her arias from "La Traviata" would make the glass in the shower door shiver, and you could hear her even when you and your touch-football teammates were standing outside in the yard in a huddle.

 

Or her bassoon: that was still another musical accomplishment. The case usually sat on top of the ironing board in the utility room, where there was also one of our good straightback chairs from the diningroom set and a music stand. She'd go back there to do the laundry, but she wouldn't be there ten minutes before you'd hear her bassoon over the churning of the dryer and washer. She played Tuesday and Thursday nights in the civic symphony, and she played Sunday afternoons with a woodwind quintet whose practice sessions I would be forced to sacrifice the NFL game of the week for.

 

And how did my father react to this? He went into his record-lined den, where he clapped on his headphones (Koss $160), slipped an Ella Fitzgerald record onto the custom-tailored stereo that cost more than my braces, and eased down into his red leather club chair with his slippered feet crossed on the ottoman and his toes keeping time. You could walk by the den door and see his lips moving and his eyelids fluttering as if he were having a vision, sort of jerking like a dog in sleep. If he caught you trying to steal past the door, he'd wave you inside the "music room," shut the door, take off the earphones, then force you to hear the same passages over and over and share his enthusiasm.

 

My sister was the kind of student pianist who never had to be told to practice; she did it the first thing upon waking up, and I never needed an alarm clock so long as I lived at home: two-handed scales ripped me out of sleep. She looked forward to her recitals, playing them flawlessly. Her bookshelves held little white busts of composers such as Chopin and Shubert whose adult works she had already mastered at age 12. When she played in her teacher's recitals at the end of each semester, her teacher could be seen smiling blithely away in the audience as she played: she was always placed last on a card of a dozen aspiring Van Cliburns, and it was obvious that her teacher was so secure in the feeling that my sister woiuld put her on the map someday that she gave the impression she could have fallen happily to sleep while my sister's disciplined fingers effortlessly retraced her lessons.

 

We had matchbooks with muscial notes, ashtrays in the shape of a treble clef. On the wall of the livingroom were framed concert posters; primitive musical instruments -- African and Mexican wooden flutes -- stood on the mantle. We had one worn-out television (used largely for PBS programs on music), three stereos and at least a dozen radios tuned to FM stations. They all -- mother, father, sister -- whistled and sang and tapped their toes and hummed and flapped their feet and snapped their fingers and danced about the house at all hours regardless of the activity they were involved in, be it washing dishes or putting out onion seedlings or changing a flat tire.

 

But I was of a different breed....