#Pretend the first two periods of the previous sentences are commas.

[not-medic-tf2]

Uhh mechanical room. Steampunk but old. Relic????

[theamberfang]

IDA: A Study in Gold, Chapter 2-1

After a brief stint exploring the concept of editing with my chapter one analysis, I’m returning to continue my analysis of A Study in Gold in its second chapter. With this return are a couple of changes to the structure of my posts.

First is what you are reading right now: some opening statements and comments addressing “In-Depth Analysis” itself, which previously would have be separated off into a post with the “meta” tag. Now that I’ve established an intent of compiling my analysis and fixing them up, I feel more free to have this sort of dated information that I can later cut out.

Second is that at the end of each paragraph (or post, if I maintain the paragraph per post format) I want to pull back and take a look at the paragraph as a whole. I offhandedly did this for about half of my posts for chapter one, and in compiling and editing it, I found that I liked when the paragraphs were set apart this way. When I didn’t offer any closing thoughts, it became difficult to differentiate between paragraphs and it all just blended together.

One last thing before getting into analysis-proper: in my compiling, I noticed that I had mentioned something about reviewing the chapter as a whole. At the time it was to dive into what made me so invested into the narrator’s life, but there’s also a general call to explore what the chapter has to say about “change.” At the moment, I’m a bit tired of exploring my own analysis of chapter one, but I do generally like the idea of pulling back for chapter reviews. I may even return to that idea before I even finish chapter two.

Anyway, onto chapter two! Starting with what looks to be a quite the long paragraph...

In short order, I had made the necessary arrangements to take up a position as a teaching fellow at St. Assisi's, although due to the long delay between when Dr. Boargelat's letter was posted and when I received it, I would have to wait nearly three months for the next semester to begin before I could take up my newfound duties as an educator.

And this paragraph starts off with a very long sentence. It’s to the point that it might actually be a run-on sentence? At the least, I don’t think the simple comma after “St. Assisi’s” is appropriate punctuation; the easiest correction would be to use a semicolon instead.

The caveat here is that this could be some sort of dated grammar that’s accurate to the period, but given my ignorance of that sort of topic, I could say this about any mistake I find in the future. Regardless, I’d prefer the story to stick to modern rules of grammar: there hadn’t been significant indication in chapter one that the writing itself would explore archaic forms of grammar, so starting now is off-putting.

Anyway, from now I’ll pretend that the punctuation is fixed with a semicolon.

There are two distinct thoughts being expressed here (which is why a mere comma isn’t appropriate to separate them), and something notable is how the length of each thought corresponds to what they actually describe. “In short order” is followed by a brief statement about our narrator having made arrangements. In kind, “due to the long delay” is followed by a thought that more than doubles the length of the previous.

Chapter one has also set a precedent for skipping through time, taking a single chapter to describe a many months-long process of recovery. An important distinction though is that we’re learning about this “three month wait” in the first sentence of this chapter, so this time-span is much less likely to be brushed aside and is instead more important to the story as a whole. (Of course, with my foreknowledge of the story, I can say this with confidence.)

The prudent course of action would have been to delay my departure to the city until nearer to when my contract began and ensure that I had adequate lodgings lined up, but I found myself so filled with excitement that I could not bear any further wait.

Again, we have a correlation between time and the amount of words devoted to describing the span. Describing the why and how of the prudence of a delay, in itself creates a delay before the reader learns what Judith actually did. Once we learn that she opted not to wait, the sentence has already ended.

Chapter one had also provided hints that prepare us for this action. We’d seen that she was disappointed to sleep through simply getting a sight of Zootopia, and we more deeply explored how dissatisfied she is with life in the Burrows.

Despite everything, if there’s one thing that hasn’t changed about Judith since her childhood, it’s how much she doesn’t want to live at home.

I would take the time available to me as a holiday, I decided, and live out of a hotel as I got to know Zootopia.

Given how chapter one gave me the impression that Judith’s idea of Zootopia is akin to a sort of mythical, fantasy place, her treating this as a holiday made me think of a child going to Disneyland.

The brief clause of “I decided” is interesting to me. It’s self-evident that this is her own decision, but still chose to emphasize it. Given the context, it’s here in opposition to “the prudent course of action” of waiting before moving to Zootopia: she’s made her decision, and that in and of itself is reason enough.

There are two slightly different ways to interpret this though: either she feels a need to convince herself, or she feels a need to justify herself. I’m thinking the latter, since she really wants to spend time in Zootopia, but she needs to justify herself against her military experience. From this, we might be able to infer that our protagonist hasn’t historically done much for her own benefit; she isn’t used to “treating herself.” She’s probably not used to taking vacations, and maybe there is also an element of needing to convince herself to go.

My parents were somewhat disappointed to learn of my pending departure, having grown used to my presence back on the farm and despairing of what could happen in the city.

There’s nothing surprising about this detail regarding her parents. We’ve seen that the Hopps parents are attentive and caring, so their disappointment at Judith leaving is natural. While worrying about their child’s safety is also in line with their established characters, it also makes me recall the concern their counterparts had in the movie. In the context of this story though, they probably can’t push the issue in the same way: their daughter has already had a whole career in the military, which was probably far more dangerous.

Although I love and cherish my parents deeply, I confess that I have always found it easier to do so from a distance.

Judith “confessing” this information implies that preferring this distance is somewhat embarrassing, and highlights how family-oriented bunny culture is. There’s some shame in being away from family.

Since this is only being revealed subtly through word choice, I also get an impression that this shame is ingrained subconsciously, and under normal circumstances, the reader is meant to understand this subconsciously. (I’m not sure where I’m going with this point really, but here it is.)

This thought of mine, while lacking the proper filial piety, was only reinforced at the Bunny Burrows train station when my parents and an assortment of my siblings and their kits came to see me off.

Based on context, my first inclination is to think that the “reinforced thought” is that our narrator loves and cherishes her parents deeply, and I do think this is intent. After really looking at these sentences though, the main thought of the previous sentence is that “it [is] easier to [love and cherish my parents] from a distance.” So the reading here could very well be that Judith would prefer that the family that came to see her off were elsewhere, at a distance.

I suppose if the previous sentence were really being reinforced, then both parts would be. I can imagine that she appreciates the fact that her family is seeing her off, but they are doing and/or saying some things that are bothering her. It’s just that within this paragraph, it really does leave it all up to the imagination. The scene may very well be fleshed out in the next paragraph, but the introduction of it has no detail.

Though, the focus here really is on Judith’s feelings, so any specific details about the scene would detract from that. Those very feelings are quite mixed and complicated, so the vagueness of the scene that represents those feelings seems more appropriate now that I’ve thought about it.

We also have mention of “proper filial piety” which is quite a way to express how important family is in bunny culture. “Piety” is religious, so for bunnies, the family is something to be revered and worshiped. This lack of piety is also another hint that Judith is probably atheist, or at least otherwise nonreligious.

This paragraph pulls a doubled-duty of setting up what’s coming up next - a spontaneous adventure into Zootopia - while properly closing out the previous chapter.

I could easily see this paragraph being split in two though. The first three sentences are wholly focused on the move to Zootopia, and the latter sentences are about Judith’s family. Looking again at the fourth sentence, it really does seem like the start of a new paragraph to me.

Mashing all of these sentences into one big paragraph does contribute to a sense of busyness though. There’s a lot going on in this paragraph, which correlates nicely with how busy our protagonist must be with the move.

Still, I think there could have been a smoother flow of ideas by starting the fourth sentence with the Hopps parents being worried about what could happen in the city. Though, it’s precisely that worry that transitions into why Judith prefers to love her parents from afar, so she doesn’t have to constantly deal with their worrying, so it just ruins the flow elsewhere. Really, the most elegant solution to the flow of ideas here is to split the paragraph.

If the intent was to really generate a sense of busyness by mixing these topics, it may have been better to really commit to mixing them. I’m not sure how that would work  (I can only imagine it being a mess), but the topics just seem too disparate as it is.

Speaking of the flow of ideas, while I described the scene as being vague when going sentence-by-sentence, by reading the paragraph as a whole I can better see the logic of the latter half. The Hopps parents worry a lot, so Judith prefers to love them from a distance, and they are likely still expressing their worry during the send-off, reinforcing her preference.