Mundane Details

When looking at literature analytically, everything said in a story can be interpreted as serving a purpose. Something that has always attracted me to different kinds of literature is attention to detail, even of the most mundane objects and experiences. The same is true in film, and I decided I would list a few examples that I could think of to compare and contrast them, as well as discuss their significance. These moments that can often be seen as commonplace often play a great role in a novel or film, such as symbolism, but more often, they seem to be key in establishing the aesthetic, and creating the general feeling of a work, as well as the moods of the individual moments within them. Also, could it be that being able to capture such experiences in a way that makes them appear a certain way, such as giving them significance when they are often ignored, or being able to capture them exactly as they appear in real life, be one of the qualities that makes a novel a work of great literature, and an author a great author? This may be what makes many novels universal. 

Haruki Murakami could be called a master of describing the smallest details that are often thought of as providing little for the development of a story, but in his novels it is possibly the most important attribute to creating his stories. There is a moment in Kafka in the Shore when Kafka Temura says "I grab a carton of milk from the fridge, check the expiration date, and pour it over some cornflakes, boil some water, and make a cup of Darjeeling tea. Toast two slices of bread, and eat them with some low fat margarine." What is the importance of this scene? Arguably, absolutely nothing. But really, such scenes as this are what makes Murakami's work cinematic. Describing scenes like this, that really are mundane, may have the ability to create a stronger bond between reader and character as well. It should also be noted that this scene takes place during a time of crisis for Kafka, and this moment may be a kind of break from the tension of what had recently happened, and what the reader is expecting will happen a few days or so after this moment. Murakami's novel After Dark is even more filled with descriptions of such experiences, and all of them together are just as important in the novel as the events that occur in it. They make the novel seem like a movie, not a book, and create the effect of placing the reader in the story, as if it were told in second person narration.

The final scenes of Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby both describe the images of their settings, which play major roles of symbolism. Doing so in the final scene of a novel seems to make the effect of closing the story with something almost calm in feeling, or the exact opposite, but most often leaves the reader questioning its significance.

Also in The Great Gatsby, attention to the detail of human expression in interaction is key in characterization, and also creating the effect of an almost magical tone. When Nick Carraway first meets Jay Gatsby, he describes his first impression of him: “He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.” Such a conclusion of a person upon first meeting them is unlikely, but that is what makes this moment key in the novel.

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers creates a lens of a child's perspective not only because it is partially narrated by a young main character in that the protagonist F. Jasmine's thoughts are expressed to the reader by McCullers, but because of the moments in which ordinary objects and scenes are described with extreme detail by McCullers, similarly to the way the reader would imagine the F. Jasmine would. For example, the many scenes in which the trellis' shadows "stretch" across the grass outside of F. Jasmine's house during sunsets can be thought of as a symbol of the passage of time, which in the summer in which the novel takes place seems to F. Jasmine to go slowly, but to the reader its actual speed is clear.