I want to write books and act on stage and sing songs and solve mysteries and learn new things and travel everywhere and live life – Roopa Banerjee
If a friend narrates her life’s ambitions as above, your first reaction is likely to be a sigh and think that that it is a very long sentence! However, it’s clever use of polysyndeton, a literary device.
Polysyndeton is the deliberate insertion of conjunctions in a sentence with the intention of slowing down its rhythm and is widely used in poetry and literature. When used well, it facilitates the flow of ideas in smooth, rhythmic style. If used without care, the result is a botched-up sentence with too many conjunctions. The most commonly used conjunctions are: and, because, or, but, if, and when.
The word ‘polysyndeton’ is derived from the ancient Greek πολύ (poly), meaning “many,” and συνδετόν (syndeton), meaning “bound together with”. It separates each element and assigns equal importance to each of them as it links them together with repeated use of conjunctions.
For instance, in After the Storm, American novelist Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) wrote: “I asked, ‘Who killed him?’ and he replied, ‘I don’t know but he’s definitely dead.’ It was not light and there was water in the road and no lights and boats through the town and blown down trees”. This is a classic example of polysyndeton as it repeats conjunctions to give rhythm and flow to the sentence.
In the poem I know why the caged bird sings American poet Maya Angelou (1928-2014) has used polysyndeton brilliantly: “When things were very bad, his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep.”
Among prominent novelists from the British Victorian era, Charles Dickens has probably used polysyndetons the most. In many of his novels, the prose is peppered generously with this literary device. From “There were fields and cows and dunghills and heaps and ditches” in Dombey and Son, to “….to mingle with the scents of gin and beer and coffee and tea and whatever else” in A Tale of Two Cities, polysyndetons mark their presence in gentlest form. When writers study this literary device, they frequently refer to examples in works of Charles Dickens as he used it most unobtrusively.
Polysyndeton was popular among American authors, too. Prominent American writer and humourist Mark Twain (1835-1910) used it profusely in most of his works. In his novel Huckleberry Finn, an example of polysyndeton is in the following extract “I donned my old clothes and my sugarhogshead once more and I was free and satisfied.”
Everyday conversations are also often filled with polysyndetons without our realising it. We often utter sentences like “At the party, we had sausages and chips and cake and cola.” In fact, spoken prose is more likely to use repeated conjunctions as one doesn’t have the comfort of visible commas in our speech. Young children are also most likely to use polysyndeton, particularly when they are excited while answering. It is normal to hear children say, “I have a brother and a sister and a best friend and a pet!”
Exercise
Identify the authors of these famous lines which have used these polysyndetons:
- “But they liked her and admired her and pronounced that she was a nice girl and a girl they would like to know more about.”
- “There was a rumbling of boots and the shuffling of shoes and then it was quiet and all eyes on the speaker.”
- “Men, she perceives, are clumsy, and talk loud, and have no drawing-room accomplishments, and are rude; and she proceeds to model herself on them.”
- “It is weak, and contemptible, and unworthy, in a parent to relax in such a case. It is sacrificing general advantage to private feelings.”
Answers
- Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
- Herman Melville (Moby Dick)
- Sir Max Beerbohm (The Decline of the Graces)
- James Boswell (Life of Johnson)
Also read: Wrap a story in silver foil
