Purpose
At first, the use of simple sentences seems elementary and unexciting, these are the types of sentences used in children’s books and spoken by novice language learners. However, even in the most academic and the highly valued “classics” of literature in any tongue, simple sentences are employed to clearly state a fact, without any confusing language or allowing much room for interpretation. The value is seen in that when a passage is very fluid or imaginative, the simple sentence gives you an anchoring point, it sticks out and says bluntly what the author wants to say. The simple sentence not only emphasizes by contrasting simple language against more convoluted words, but gives the reader a clear picture of the idea/message.
For instance, if the works from the Romantic period are examined the writing is very flowery and aesthetic. This allows the work to be highly imaginative and interpretive, but more often than not, time must be taken to fully untangle the whole picture. The simple sentence is employed here to immediately give the reader information, a fact or statement that can be easily understood within the context.
Steps for Analysis
Identify a simple sentence by looking for a short, almost childlike/robotic sentence.
Determine if it follows the basic subject → verb→ object order
Make sure it only has one independent clause
Does that sentence seem to stand out more than the others?
Look for the intended message or meaning behind the passage/text as a whole.
What is the author’s purpose?
What is the theme?
Compare the simple sentence to the theme of the text
How does the simple sentence reflect the message of the passage?
Why would the author choose to use a simple sentence here?
What is being emphasized and why?
Why does that sentence stand out among the more complex and convoluted sentences?
Example from The Laugh of the Medusa
Analysis of Passage
"I wished that that woman would write and proclaim this unique empire so that other women, other unacknowledged sovereigns, might exclaim: I, too, overflow; my desires have invented new desires, my body knows unheard-of songs. Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst-burst with forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames and sold for a stinking fortune. And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn't open my mouth, I didn't repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are mad! What's the meaning of these waves, these floods, these outbursts? Where is the ebullient, infinite woman who, immersed as she was in her naivete, kept in the dark about herself, led into self-disdain by the great arm of parental-conjugal phallocentrism, hasn't been ashamed of her strength? Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives (for she was made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a ... divine composure), hasn't accused herself of being a monster? Who, feeling a funny desire stirring inside her (to sing, to write, to dare to speak, in short, to bring out something new), hasn't thought she was sick? Well, her shameful sickness is that she resists death, that she makes trouble."
The simple sentence is identified above (in the bold) by the subject → verb → subject compliment structure of the sentence. It has only one independent clause and in this sentence specifically there are no additional grammatical forms, i.e. prepositional phrases, adjectives, or adverbs. This particular sentence stands out from the rest of the paragraph which flows as a continuously moving idea, because it is halted, it forces the reader into a pause considering the message. This kind of ebullient, passionate tone carries throughout the whole essay, which further emphasizes the short, blunt, simple sentence. In the passage above, Cixous talks of her desire for women to be free from the social expectations of what a woman “should be” during the time of it’s publishing (1970’s). Yet, how Cixous herself was afraid and allowed the world of “parental-conjugal phallocentrism” to shame her into submission.
The language employed here is very conceptual as she is criticizing a hypothetical subject, the idea of oppression, and because of this abstract line of thought it is easy to get lost in the current of the text without achieving full understanding. Here, the simple sentence serves to break up the complexity and surmise the idea of the paragraph; “I am ashamed”. When the whole work is filled with imagery and pronouns that supply the aesthetic, they are examples for the main idea “I am ashamed”.
The Laugh of the Medusa Author(s): Helene Cixous, Keith Cohen, Paula Cohen Source: Signs, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer, 1976), pp. 875-893 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173239 Accessed: 22/04/2009 14:57