The Funniest Little Girl You Ever Saw
One of the most effective uses of plain, simple descriptive imagery to bring a character to life is put to use for a minor figure. She is described before her official introduction as a funny little thing, but it turns out she’s a Princess:
“She was like a china doll—the sixpenny kind; she had a white face, and long yellow hair, done up very tight in two pigtails; her forehead was very big and lumpy, and her cheeks came high up, like little shelves under her eyes. Her eyes were small and blue. She had on a funny black frock, with curly braid on it, and button boots that went almost up to her knees. Her legs were very thin. She was sitting in a hammock chair nursing a blue kitten—not a sky-blue one, of course, but the colour of a new slate pencil.”
Stunned into Silence
A very descriptive of imagery is also used to delineate the very real but often difficult to believe sensation of being absolutely shell-shocked into silence. The very idea of being put into this emotionally stunted muteness can be overdone even though most people have actually seen it occur, but this particular vision is very realistically wrought:
“I have read of people being at a loss for words, and dumb with emotion, and I’ve read of people being turned to stone with astonishment, or joy, or something, but I never knew how silly it looked till I saw Noel standing staring at the Editor with his mouth open. He went red and he went white, and then he got crimson, as if you were rubbing more and more crimson lake on a palette. But he didn’t say a word”
The Indian Uncle Makes an Entrance
The entrance of the Indian Uncle into the story has all the dramatic flair of a stage entrance in a play. The description even comes with sound effects as precise and clearly delineated as stage directions:
“we wanted to see the Uncle, so we looked over the banisters when he came, and we were as quiet as mice—but when Eliza had let him in she went straight down to the kitchen and made the most awful row you ever heard, it sounded like the Day of judgement, or all the saucepans and crockery in the house being kicked about the floor, but she told me afterwards it was only the tea-tray and one or two cups and saucers, that she had knocked over in her flurry.”
The Lady Asking for Donations
A masterpiece in miniature is the only proper way to describe the efficiency with which imagery is brilliantly utilized for the singular purpose of describing a minor character. She is introduced without precision as a lady come to ask for money to build orphanage for the offspring of deceased seamen. She is not even given a name and yet in a burst of literary precision that is the verbal equivalent of fireworks booming colorfully in the sky, this unnamed personage is brought vividly to life:
“She was not a young lady, and she had a mantle with beads, and the beads had come off in places—leaving a browny braid showing, and she had printed papers about the dead sailors in a sealskin bag, and the seal had come off in places, leaving the skin bare.”
