Rhetoric Study

“And Daddy said the next day when the Pettigrew door opened up around midmorning it was a new monkey that came out and went down the steps and along the sidewalk on his knuckles. He was back in blue pants, Daddy said, but did not at all appear to be the same creature who had relieved himself into them previously. He was a haunted chimpanzee, according to Daddy, and went everywhere looking backwards so as to keep out of the way of the Neely Chronicle if one happened to come at him. Daddy said he did not go up the flagpole right away but stood cowering at the base of it all drawn up on himself and skitterish until Miss Pettigrew showed up on the lip of the porch and said, ‘Go on,’ which was not quite enough to send him scooting up the pole like before but did start him to creeping towards the top, still looking behind himself and still seeming altogether half the size he’d been the day before. But Daddy said something magical happened to that chimpanzee when he finally made it to the knob and stood up on it; he said Junious sort of blossomed like a flower, gradually opened up and swelled to his full size. And Daddy said he looked back at Miss Pettigrew one last time before he turned his attention to the horizon which he considered with a very grave and sobering expression as he soaked himself again.” (pg 103)

This passage is towards the middle of the book where Junious begins to periodically pee atop the flagpole. This is the passage that is told right after Junious gets scolded by Miss Pettigrew for peeing in his pants and drawing in a crowd. Junious comes out properly in this passage but returns to his old self when he relieves himself at the top.

This quote perfectly shows T.R. Pearson’s style. Pearson lacks punctuations and his use of run on sentences that look like a paragraph, are at times very confusing and just sound like rambling. He also uses a lot of pronouns while there are multiple characters in the sentence which makes it hard to figure who “he” or “she” is. Although the rambling and extremely long paragraphs can be frustrating, it serves a purpose. This book is a series of stories told by Louis Benfield, a young boy who is getting his stories from his dad. Louis was not alive or too young to witness most of what he is telling; the stories he tells are things his dad tells him. Louis usually starts off his sentences using “Daddy said” and there is a “Daddy said” somewhere in the sentence at any given time. The rambling on works in this case, because it sounds like a little kid trying to give you a lot of detail and information in one breath. I found it very annoying at first because I had to reread sentences to understand everything. Then, I figured it makes perfect sense for Pearson to make Louis talk this way. When people tell stories, they don’t tell it sentence by sentence, but rather as one big sentence with a lot of conjunctions with a few pauses (or commas in this case).

Pearson also uses similes in a comical way. In the end of the above passage, Pearson says, “he said Junious sort of blossomed like a flower, gradually opened up and swelled to his full size. And Daddy said he looked back at Miss Pettigrew one last time before he turned his attention to the horizon which he considered with a very grave and sobering expression as he soaked himself again.” (pg 103) Pearson makes Junious grow back to his full self, metaphorically, when he pees. He says Junious was like a flower and what do flowers need to grow? Water, or in Junious’s case, pee.

Anecdotes also make up A Short History of a Small Place. Anecdote: a short account of a particular incident or event of an interesting or amusing nature, often biographical. (Dictionary.com) A Short History of a Small Place is a book purely based on anecdotes. The incidents that Louis tells of are always funny, even when it is about suicides. The entire book is like the above passage which is a great example of one of his anecdotes. Louis is recounting the peeing Junious story that his dad tells him, which is amusing. Pearson’s use of anecdotes keep the readers interested and laughing which helps to make the book move at an even pace.