Imitating Grammar to Understand Purpose and Craft

Here is an example from Imelda Enriquez. As we collaborated for this assignment, we were really

able to capture how grammar intersects with Author’s Purpose and Craft. When we imitate sentences,

we are doing more than imitating a grammatical structure. We are also looking at why an author would

have used the sentences in this way to reveal character and theme. Another important distinction here

is that our work is not about correcting things that are wrong, but analyzing the impact on the reader. 

Students will read an excerpt from “Wonder” by R.J. Palacio.

“I know I’m not an ordinary ten-year-old kid. I mean, sure, I do ordinary things. I eat ice cream. I ride my bike. I play ball. I have an XBox. Stuff like that makes me ordinary. I guess. And I feel ordinary. Inside. But I know ordinary kids don’t make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. I know ordinary kids don’t get stared at wherever they go.”

-Wonder by R.J. Palacio 

The excerpt has many short sentences. I would ask students why Palacio wrote it that way.

By using short sentences, how does Palacio give the reader information about the character?

Normally, we’d ask students to combine sentences to make them flow better. But Placio chose NOT to.

Let’s look at what happens when we combine them. 

“I know I’m not an ordinary ten-year-old kid. I mean, sure, I do ordinary things like eat ice cream, ride my bike, play ball, and play XBox. Stuff like that makes me ordinary, I guess. And I feel ordinary inside, but I know ordinary kids don’t make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. I know ordinary kids don’t get stared at wherever they go.”

How does your view of the character change? 

Here are some of my thoughts…

Original	Revision	Significance
I eat ice cream. I ride my bike. I play ball. I have an XBox.	I mean, sure, I do ordinary things like eat ice cream, ride my bike, play ball, and play XBox.	By teasing the different items out in sentences on their own, they are each a punctuation of a list. They emphasize all the WAYS he is different. This becomes more important later in the paragraph because the whole point of this passage is that the kid ISN’T normal to other folks.
Stuff like that makes me ordinary. I guess.	Stuff like that makes me ordinary,I guess.	These are very different choices. In the first one, he makes a statement. The next sentence shows you that he disagrees with it. Or at the least that he’s not sure about it. In the second one, the “I guess” just sounds like an afterthought.
And I feel ordinary. Inside. But I know ordinary kids don’t make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds.	And I feel ordinary inside, but I know ordinary kids don’t make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds.	Wow. This one is shocking in comparison. Look how Palacio makes “inside” its own sentence. That fragment emphasized that Auggie feels about NOT being ordinary. And that it is a fragment is also significant because when people react the way they do, it must tear him into pieces.  This structure also begins to take us to where the author is headed with theme: what is ordinary? Should what is on the outside determine that?