Tactical Purpose
The tactical purpose of a complex sentence is to make the sentence sound more appealing to the reader. It adds depth and helps the flow of a sentence by adding more besides just a noun and a verb. The appearance of a complex sentence usually implies a certain moment in time, which is often seen in instructions. One has to wait for a certain moment in time before one can continue with the instructions given to them.
Steps for Analysis
Identify a sentence consisting of a dependent and an independent clause.
Think about what is important about the timing in the sentence.
Consider questioning why a complex sentence was chosen for these. Try to answer the following questions:
Why would the author choose to draw attention to this moment?
What emotions or instincts of the reader is the author trying to access by using a complex sentence?
What would the sentence be like without it?
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Page 393
“We walked round on the road to the stucco house & were about to descend to the rose garden when we heard a loud crackling sound as if the breaking of twigs. We thought it must be a man we’d seen in another part of the park coming through the thick rhododendron groves from the frog-pond”.
Plath, Sylvia, and Karen V. Kukil. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962. New York City, Anchor Books, 2000.
The bolded sentence consists of a dependent and independent clause which is the first step to finding a complex sentence. In the bold sentence, the word “when” starts the dependent clause, while everything before it is an independent clause. The independent clause tells about a walk that continued for a while before the dependent clause states there was a crackling sound. The crackling sound occurred at a specific moment in time and disrupted the walk that had been occurring for a while.
In Sylvia Plath’s journals, Plath shares a lot of the experiences and emotions she has gone through during her lifetime. In this quote, she is attempting to portray the suspense that she experienced to the readers by making them ask questions about what could’ve made that noise. Could it have been a bear? Or maybe a moose? The next sentence provides some context of what a possibility could be, but Plath uses the verb “thought” to imply that is it not confirmed the noise came from the man in the park. Using complex sentences, Plath is able to express her emotions through the text.