Story Analysis: The Giant Water Bug
The Giant Water Bug
This story is about one phenomenon of nature, which the author observes ones when she was walking alone the edge. The frog was drained by a giant water bug.
From the stylistic point of view the text falls into two parts. In the first part of the story the author uses a lot of literary stylistic devices such as epithets, trite metaphors and similes. For example metaphors: Frogs were flying all around me; similes: like a schematic diagram of an amphibian; like a deflating football; like a kicked tent. The author uses a lot of cases of epithet: it was a monstrous and terrifying thing; winter-killed grass; dumbstruck. The reason of using epithets and similes is to create
the vivid image of the frog being sucked down by a giant water bug in the reader’s mind. And on the other side he uses a lot of epithets to share his attitude to the phenomenon, emotions.
In the second part the language is scientific due to the abundance of scientific terms such as vicious bite, the puncture shoot, enzymes injected, dissolve. Usually in literary texts there isn’t such an abundance of scientific descriptions.
In the first part the author shows how emotionally she is excited by the sight of the drained frog. The purpose of the changing of the style in the second part of the text is to evoke the reader’s curiosity. If we had had only the first part of the text we would be outraged at the cruelty of the giant water bug, but we are not outraged. This is a curious fact, phenomenon and it showed through the language, through this neutral explanation.
The idea of the story is that, if you try to be closer to nature and you are attentive to things that surround you, you will be shocked and then you will discover new curious phenomenon of nature. And perhaps you will not spoil the nature. This is the moral of the text.
Nature presents amusing, entertaining things if we look at it attentively.
This story is about one phenomenon of nature, which the author observes ones when she was walking alone the edge. The frog was drained by a giant water bug.
From the stylistic point of view the text falls into two parts. In the first part of the story the author uses a lot of literary stylistic devices such as epithets, trite metaphors and similes. For example metaphors: Frogs were flying all around me; similes: like a schematic diagram of an amphibian; like a deflating football; like a kicked tent. The author uses a lot of cases of epithet: it was a monstrous and terrifying thing; winter-killed grass; dumbstruck. The reason of using epithets and similes is to create
the vivid image of the frog being sucked down by a giant water bug in the reader’s mind. And on the other side he uses a lot of epithets to share his attitude to the phenomenon, emotions.
In the second part the language is scientific due to the abundance of scientific terms such as vicious bite, the puncture shoot, enzymes injected, dissolve. Usually in literary texts there isn’t such an abundance of scientific descriptions.
In the first part the author shows how emotionally she is excited by the sight of the drained frog. The purpose of the changing of the style in the second part of the text is to evoke the reader’s curiosity. If we had had only the first part of the text we would be outraged at the cruelty of the giant water bug, but we are not outraged. This is a curious fact, phenomenon and it showed through the language, through this neutral explanation.
The idea of the story is that, if you try to be closer to nature and you are attentive to things that surround you, you will be shocked and then you will discover new curious phenomenon of nature. And perhaps you will not spoil the nature. This is the moral of the text.
Nature presents amusing, entertaining things if we look at it attentively.