I am currently reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee for my project. I remember having to read this in school a long time ago (Shanna thinks freshman year but I thought it was in elementary) but don't really remember it. While reading, I came across one of the best written descriptive paragraphs that I think I might have ever read. This description is about an old women who is bedridden and ready to pass on. The paragraph goes as follows:
"She was horrible. Her face was the color of a dirty pillowcase, and the corners of her mouth glistened with wet, which inched like a glacier down the deep grooves enclosing her chin. Old-age liver spots dotted her cheeks, and her pale eyes had black pinpoint pupils. Her hands were knobby, and the cuticles were grown up over her fingernails. Her bottom plate was not in, and her upper lip protruded; from time to time she would draw her nether lip to her upper plate and carry her chin with it. This made the wet move faster" (Lee 106).
Is this not awesome or what?! It literally made my upper lip curl in disgust as I pictured this horrid old lady decaying under a mountain of quilts. The adverbs really heighten the disgustingness, but give her power with her "pinpoint pupils". I also enjoyed the sentence structure and flow. All around this single paragraph has made Lee a god in my eyes. Yes, I thought that her writing was great from the start, especially after the easiness of Twilight, but this paragraph took her to the next level. "Wow" is all I have to say.
Works Cited
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Grand Central Publishing. 1960.
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