Graphics

The graphic design principle that makes “Faith” an example of multiplicity is Color.

“Color can convey a mood, describe reality, or codify information.  Words like ‘gloomy,’ ‘drab,’ and ‘glittering’ each bring to mind a general climate of colors, a palette of relationships.  Designers use color to make some things stand out (warning signs) and to make other things disappear (camouflage).  Color serves to differentiate and connect, to highlight and hide,” (71).

Each time a new layer of verse is introduced, it appears in a different color.  That is how it makes the piece cumulative: sometimes words from a previous verse will change to the new color and it becomes part of the new verse.  Each word is read when it appears in the new color, so it makes the words that need to be read stand out and brings them to the reader’s attention.  The final result is a complex poem with multiple layers of colors, some words having changed colors over the course of the poem.

Calvino’s Quickness

My interpretation of Calvino’s definition of quickness is basically the most effective and economical way of telling whatever story you are telling.  This doesn’t necessarily mean the fastest way of telling the story, and relative periods of time have to be taken into consideration (the period of time over which the story takes place versus the period of time over which the story is told).  There are certain elements authors use in telling their stories to help tell them effectively and economically, so the quality of quickness is achieved.  An example of this, Calvino points out, is using both a narrative and verbal link to hold a chain of events together, and stressing repetition so the reader anticipates the repeated situation or phrase.

Grounding Calvino’s definition of quickness in my eperience with print literature, I find this quality evident in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden.  Burnett’s 1911 novel is about an orphaned girl who is sent to live with her uncle in Yorkshire, England.  During her time at her uncle’s manor, she, her sickly cousin, and another local boy discover a hidden garden in the manor’s yard and it both physically and emotionally heals the characters in the novel.  The garden without a doubt serves as the narrative link, connecting the progress of each character and continuously bringing the characters together.  There are several verbal links as well throughout the novel.  The garden is constantly described as “brightening” the characters, “reviving” them, etc.  What the garden is described as doing for the characters is a verbal link.  Also, there are words that describe each character’s personality throughout the book as well.  Mary is repeatedly described as plain and surly, but is described less so as the book progresses and the garden transforms her.  The reader looks forward to repeated visits with Dickon, the boy Mary meets, and their repeated trips to the garden.

Mary and Dickon