The Recipe

In the last two chapter of a simple soul I realized the importance of each word in Flaubert's descriptions. At first I thought of them as wordy, but how con fiction be wordy? It can't be because every author has his own style to interpret his writing. In the case of Flaubert it is to make every word useful for his characterization, narration and description.

When he writes: "when she exhaled her last breath, she thought she saw in

the half-opened heavens a gigantic parrot hovering above her head." Every word creates the coherence of the sentence. If we were to take out the word gigantic, the readers perception of the scene would not be the same. Instead of imagining Loulou as the holy ghost showing the importance Felicite had for him, we would just see another bird that came near her shoulder after her death.

 It is like a cookie recipe. If you add all the ingredients the recipe will come out just fine, and it will be much enjoyable because it is the product of the exact recipe. But if you miss one ingredient the cookies will come out but not as delicious. Just as words, if you take one of Flaubert's words his sentences would not be as descriptive enough to depict the meaning of the story and of its characters.