Grammatical Style in Lumpkin’s The Making of a Southerner

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Effective Use of Grammatical Style in Lumpkin’s The Making of a Southerner

Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin has many effective uses of grammatical style. In the first full paragraph on page 86 of The Making of a Southerner this is evidenced. She begins the sentence with an adverbial which ties this paragraph to the previous one. Lumpkin uses the quotation “’stir up the Negroes’” to cause the reader to feel like he/she is present during this time period. The quotation draws the reader into the paragraph because of its status as a first-hand account, which lends credibility to the argument being presented. Later in the first sentence Lumpkin uses a dash as a sentence interrupter. This pause places much emphasis on the phrase after the dash, causing the reader to give it more weight. Indeed, this phrase is the focus of the entire paragraph, and Lumpkin has adroitly set it apart.

Following the first sentence, Lumpkin uses questions to enhance the feeling of ‘there-ness.’ In other words, Lumpkin presents the material in an argumentative fashion in order to draw the reader further into the mind-set of the white male of whom she speaks. Lumpkin uses her position as narrator to step back and give someone else a voice. She argues as though she herself were a white male in the late 1800s to early 1900s. This The quotes continue to support her argumentative style by giving examples of the names and rumors floating during this time now past. On and on Lumpkin extorts the reader to feel what it is like to be a scared white male after the Civil War. Question after question repetitively persuade the reader to vividly imagine the “drunken Negroes [. . .] burning down plantation homes” as well as the “armed recruits, former slaves [roaming] the countryside demanding of white men to get their vehicles off the road to make room for these uniformed freedmen” (86). The imagery skillfully hidden in the questionnaire is astounding.

Then, of a sudden, a dash appears to bring the reader full circle. We are now aware again that the narrator is asserting a voice of her own with the small apposition “the rumor said so” (86). This phrase gives the reader the sense that Lumpkin now disagrees with this attitude once held by her father. It belies the view that Lumpkin is apparently trying to hide for an unbiased second-hand account of the period.

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