True Confession: The Prince of Tides is the only book by Pat Conroy I have ever read. That being said, after completing it, I felt a bit awed and overwhelmed. His word choice alone made me decide to begin reading the dictionary every night. Quite frankly, the whole time I was reading it I thought—I am going to have to read it again so that I can analyze every jot and tittle. However, the one thing that I know I want to look at more carefully is Conroy’s excellent characterization.
I love his physical descriptions.
“When I looked up, Dr. Lowenstein was staring at me from the door of her office. She was expensively dressed and lean. Her eyes were dark and unadorned. In the shadows of that room with Vivaldi fading in sweet echoes, she was breathtakingly beautiful, one of those go-to-hell New York women with the incorruptible carriage of lionesses. Tall and black-haired, she looked as if she had been airbrushed with breeding and good taste” (58).
Collonwalde—“He was the largest, most powerful man I had ever seen…He grew out of the earth like some fantastic, grotesque tree. His body was thick, marvelous, and colossal. His eyes were blue and vacant. A red beard covered his face, but there was something wrong about him. It was the way he looked at us…that alerted us to the danger” (129).
“Isabel Newberry had the most soul chilling presence I had ever encountered. Her lips were thin and colorless and her mouth registered a most articulate narrative of unspoken disapproval. Her nose sharp and well made, was her one perfectly wrought feature, and it twitched prettily as she stood in the gloom of her house as though the smell of me was repugnant to her. Her hair was blonde, but with help. But it was the cold aquamarine glitter of her eyes enclosed in a harsh fretwork of lines that arrowed out toward her temples…”(232).
I love the way he uses dialogue to reveal his characters thoughts.
Discussing Savannah’s latest suicide attempt, Tom asks his mother, Lila, “How did she try to do it, Mom…”
“She slit her wrists again, Tom,” my mother said starting to cry. Why does she want to do those things to me ? Haven’t I suffered enough? …
“ Are you going to New York?”
“ Oh, I can’t possibly go, Tom. This is a real hard time for me. We’re giving a dinner party Saturday night and it’s been planned for months. And the expense. I’m sure she’s in good hands and there’s nothing we can really do.”
Being there is doing something, Mom. You’ve never realized that” (21).
Overall, I want to go back and carefully analyze how Conroy characterizes each character because he not only shows us how they look but also how the
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Toni, I agree that his dialogue is masterful and that the way in which he uses it to convey characterization is fascinating. They should bottle that trick and sell it. Now, where did I put my credit card?
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