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Angel Pavement by J.B. Priestley (Essay)

Angel Pavement is an excellent of that how one book can kill in a person the interest in English literature. In order to create such killing effect the author should use certain techniques and stylistic devises. Today I'm going to speak about the language and the style of the novel.

The novel has a specific form with the prologue and epilogue, every chapter is devoted to the description of characters which appear in the novel one after another. Priestley is a master of description, he could describe somebody or something within hours or even weeks. The descriptions are usually used in order to present deep psychological analysis of the characters, to create gloomy reality showing the life conditions of the personages.

A slow chain of events is complicated by numerous enumerations, which sometimes occupy several pages and devoted to the description of London, London's streets, shops, parks, offices, squares, men in caps, men in bowler hats, men in blue helmets and everything that Priestley managed to describe in London.

But among a huge number of boring descriptions and enumerations, a sophisticated reader can find different manifestations of humor. The ironical position of the author is underlined by the frequent use of the similes with conjunction "as if", which adds a light shadow of modality to the context and creates humorous effect by showing the difference between the real state of things and described events.

The humorous effect is also achieved by the combination of the words and word combinations with different meanings: "this face… began by being almost bold at the top", "his stomach forgot about it", "desperate bicycles" etc.

Another example of Priestley's attempt to inject humor into the novel is based on the usage of grotesque in the description of restaurant "Bundle's" where Mr. Golspie and Miss Matfield ate "the red dripping half of a roasted ox" and "legs and shoulders" that "came trundling up from all directions".

And the last thing that should be mentioned while speaking about the style and the language of the novel is speech characteristics of the characters. Priestley uses different types of English language adopting it to the social and physical peculiarities of his characters. The individualization of the speech and pronunciation can be viewed on the example of Goath's speech: "Sala'y to end of mun' an' commision to yesserday "(salary to the end of the month and commission to yesterday), "wha' I say tha' ma'ers" (what I say that matters), "tha's the feller"(that's the fellow). Another example is Mr. Pelumpton , who speaks cockney and lisps: "yersh"(yes), "a norfish"(an office), "a ninteresh"(an interest). Showing different social backgrounds of his characters, Priestley violates the grammatical and stylistic norms of English language.