Topic: Descriptive Writing.
Description as a mode of writing represents in language (words and structures) the impressions
we have formed about persons, place and events. In most examples of descriptive writing the
writer uses carefully selected sensory images that appeal to the sense of taste, touch, hearing,
scent and sight.
Description may serve the following purposes:
1. Giving a clear detailed impression of a character
2. Creating a mode or atmosphere of a particular place
3. Organizing events in a particular time sequence.
Describing people
When we describe a person, we make certain choices, for example,
1. How to order the points of the description
2. The language that is appropriate for the person we are describing.
We will need to give details of the person’s physical appearance; additionally, we may record
our judgement about the person’s life and character. We may also consider other people’s
reactions to the person’s qualities, attitude and general behaviour.
In short, a description of a person reflects our observation of the person’s physical appearance as
well as his/her personal qualities.
1. Physical description
2. Personality
3. Person’s opinion on that character
Example:
Melda was eight, a thin, undergrown girl with black skin and large wonderful, wondering eyes
always open as if suddenly startled from sleep on a Christmas morning. Her hair was arranged on
her head and, between the plaits, the shining, black-brown skull. Her nose was delicately
moulded and had a waxen appearance. Her mouth, large in her narrow face with thin lips like
lines drawn by a fine artist’s paint brush, tapered tremulously at the corners and showed
susceptibility to easy laughter. She sat in her stiff, blue organdie dress lined with rayon with a
bodice pleated many times across the front, which give to her chest a fullness that her body did
not possess.
Activity 1
Instructions: Read the description and answer the questions.
He was rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer and what not. A big, loud man, with a store
and a metallic laugh. A man made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched
to make so much of him. A man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his
temples, and such a strained skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open and lift his
eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and
ready to start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self- made man. A man who
was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking- trumpet of a voice of his, his old
ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the bully of humility.
A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr. Bounderby looked older; his
seven or eight and forty might have had the seven or eight added to it again, without surprising
anybody. He had not much hair. One might have fancied if he had talked it off; and that what
was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition of being constantly blown about by his
windy boastfulness.
Questions
1. From the writer’s description what impressions have you formed of Mr. Bounderby?
2. Select the words and phrases that describe his physical appearance.
3. One what parts of his body does the writer focus on?
4. What aspects of Mr. Bounderby’s character are emphasized? 5. How is Mr. Bounderby
perceived by other people?
