Style Mapping

     The low, musical connotation of "Blood Meridian" is revealed by the diction in which there are no sophisticated words or those used simply for there pretty sound.  There is plenty of imagery and poetic description as he describes the sun as "the color of steel" and his shadow falling for "miles before him."  This also helps the flow of the passage to create a musical feel to it.  Nearly a complete opposite, a passage from "the Mud Below" consists of low denotation with a rather harsh sound to it.  The country drawl of the main character and use of slang emphasis the common diction as he gets ready to ride a bull with the supposedly inspiring words of " aw, this is a sums buck" tossed his way from a nearby helper.  The description of the bull and what the man is doing is just that, a description.  There is no embellishment on the details as he is preparing to ride the "Brahma-cross" known as Little Kisses.  The book Catcher in the Rye provides a excessivly low connotation with an evident harshness.  This story, narrated by a 16 year old with a disregard to manners, relays his story through a rambling onslaught of the chronological events of his life mixed with random bits of whatever pops into his mind.  This curving pathway of thoughts evokes a discordant mumbling in the mind as the story continues.  Meanwhile, the vulagarity of the boys lack of etiquette is repeated through the text as he repeats obscenities in order to describe nearly everything.  Through this low coarse diction his autobiography becomes a "goddam" autobiography and his brother spends his "dough" on a car which cost "damn near" four thousand dollars.  These diction types enforce the suggestivly imaginative connotation as he describes normal objects with a certain blunt hyberbolishness.  These three stories provide extensive foils for eachother and map the entire range of styles for diction.