Michael Crichton Premature Burial

Grammatical Analysis #1 The first noticeable aspect of Michael Crichton’s piece “Premature Burial” is the author’s affinity for long, cumbersome sentences. Although the piece contains many examples of compound and complex sentences, it is almost devoid of simple sentences. After reading the work twice, I have counted only two simple sentences: “Nor was this widespread fear a simple neurotic obsession” and “Victorians dealt with their uncertainty in two ways.” Both sentences contain a single independent clause, therefor they are simple sentences. In some cases, the author created compound and compound-complex sentences by connecting independent clauses with either a semi colon or, in one case, a colon. This illustrates the connection between …show more content…
The writing includes many striking acting verbs, such as arise, cease, and awake. Because the work focusses on the Victorian period, verbs are conjugated into the past tense whenever necessary. Even so, some verbs appear in other tenses. The phrase “Upon sighting the lad,” contains the verb sighting, which is the present participle form of the verb sight. For another example, some verbs are used in their infinitive form. The phrases “to delay interment” and “required to remain” both contain the infinitive forms of the verbs delay and remain. In both cases, delay and remain are also used as transitive verbs. Grammatical Analysis #2 The most striking feature I found while reading Margaret Visser’s piece “High Heels” was her eclectic use of verb tenses. Although the opening paragraph contains a few verbs in the present participle tense, the subsequent paragraphs contain many examples of infinitive, transitive, and past participle verbs. To name a few, to be, to help, and to show all appear …show more content…
Apart from the ever-present infinitive verbs, such as to be and to rouse, many striking adjective forms appear. One sentence provides prime examples of the different ways adjectives can be used. The sentence is “It was a pleasant morning, mid-September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months.” At the beginning of the sentence, we see a descriptive adjective, pleasant. Pleasant describes the subject morning and is preceded by the determiner a. Further on in the sentence, we find the two adjectives, mild and benignant, which are separated by a comma. This paring of two similar adjectives makes them coordinating adjectives, because they come from the same adjective class and are describing the same subject. Finally, we are met with the adjective keener in the phrase “a keener breath that of the summer months.” This adjective is known as a comparative adjective. A comparative adjective is the degree of an adjective ending in -er or following more. In this case, the adjective keener is used to state that the summer months were not as keen as the month of September, hence the title comparative. Another comparative adjective, wider, also appears within the text. As for verb tenses, I have already mentioned that a few infinitive verbs appear within the literary work, but other verb tenses appear as well. For