The Vivacity of Objects

The idea that most interested me was presented in the very end of the Scarry article. "An image elicited by the verbal arts, in contrast, has some of the vivacity, solidity, persistence and giveness of the perceived world, attributes that can in part be accounted for the instructional quality of writings, the explicit directions for how to construct the image that replace our own sense of volition..." (52) The verbal created image is contrasted with the day dreamed image, which has less "vivacity." The written word has the ability to make life where there is none; there is only ink, paper and you. This life feels real and has qualities of life that perhaps we miss when dreaming. We can make someone die that never really inhabited this earth; they inhabited our minds.
I began to think about how exactly these worlds are created in literature.  I admire JK Rowling and Suzanne Collins because of the worlds they write in their books. The culture feels so real, there are faults and triumphs, jobs, trees, death and births. How does an author fabricate life? How do they convince their readers that what they say is actually true? I wrote in the margins of the Scarry article, "verbal arts gives life." I then deconstructed that initial notion. To have a sentence, one generally has a subject and a predicate which consists of a verb.
The path which had hitherto been considerably smooth, now became rugged and steep. (Brown, 97)
Let's do a kind of sentence diagramming exercise here. The path is the subject of this sentence, it is modified by an adjectival phrase. (" which had hitherto been considerably smooth, now") What is indicative is the verb "became." The path was not rugged before, but now it was changing. The path, an inanimate object, suddenly has the ability in Edgar Huntly  to change! The path was probably always rugged and steep at the point which the narrator says it became. The way our language functions depends on human ability to abstractly interpret the sentence, as much as the sentence seems logical and natural. What is correct is "To my perception, the path I was walking on became rugged and steep." The path exists separate from the narrator, but only until the narrator gives us the knowledge of its existence do we grant it the ability to enter our discourse. That path was exactly as it was before the narrator arrived, but the need to describe it necessitates that a verb be ascribed to it. The path can now become animated through human description of it. The path has life! It changes like I change my clothes! In a day dream, Huntly would not have thought "The path which had hitherto been considerably smooth, now became rugged and steep" but rather just walked up the steep path. But because the path was described using a code system that requires a the subject to do something, the object has a sort of life. Is this making sense at all?
The nature of our language forces action on all that is a subject, even if that subject does not have the ability to act. Thus, written and spoken word creates life that would otherwise be glossed over in perception or daydreaming.

On page 45, the author outlines Rousseau's mental exercise for a Madame Delessert in which Rousseau writes incredibly detailed descriptions of a certain flower. Delessert is challenged to create that image of the flower based on the description. I believe Rousseau wanted to prove he can replicate the image of the flower with is words so that one does not actually need to see the flower to know exactly what it looks like. To unpack that statement and put a theory lens on this exercise, Rousseau believes that language can offer direct and perfect access to mental imagery.

We did an exercise in my writing class that mirrors Rousseau's. Our group received an ordinary object.We kept our object, a large binder clip, hidden from the prying eyes of our neighbors and set out to describe the object using words. We then went around to other groups who performed the same task, and tried to guess their object based on descriptions, and they ours. Every object was guessed. Our class was able to directly access the objects in question based on constructed images. So, the answer to the question "does language offer direct access to mental imagery?" would seem yes. And yet, I do not believe it fully.

"...but the impression made upon me by this incident was unexampled in my existence. My reading had furnished me with no instance, in any degree, parallel to this, and I found that to be a distant and second-hand spectator of events was widely different from witnessing them myself and partaking in their consequences. My judgment was, for a time, sunk into imbicility and confusion. My mind was full of images unavoidably suggested by this tale..." (87)

Even direct, live narrative was unable to directly access the emotions and story of Clithero. Reading couldn't do that either. True, images were created, but they are jumbled. In another layer, does the reader directly access Clithero's story because Huntly can't? In reading a novel, does the reader directly access the characters or author's intention? My theory is no, because language is imperfect in that sense; it cannot directly access emotions. However, we can make new worlds that are full of life.