Caroline Moore
Syntactic Permutation
Syntactic permutation involves sentence structures that are extraordinarily involved and complex. This is utilized throughout the book to prove how Christopher's thoughts often ramble on and tend to deviate from his original point. Syntactic permutation is used as a tool to achieve the author's purpose by illustrating the disorderliness of his thoughts.
"“And for example, some people say how can an eye happen by accident? Because an eye has to evolve from something else very like an eye and it doesn’t just happen because of a genetic mistake, and what is the use of half an eye? But half an eye is very useful because half an eye means that an animal can see half of an animal that wants to eat it and get it out of the way…” (165)
In this chapter, Christopher begins by talking about why people believe in God, and then his mind begins to wander and he begins to talk about how natural selection has affected eyes. This passage helps to illustrate how Christopher's thought process works the majority of the time. While it is hard for most people to follow, it makes sense to Christopher, and thinking like this helps increase his understanding of certain topics. The construction of his sentences are very hard to follow in this passage, but this aspect of syntactic permutation allows the reader to see how Christopher’s thoughts flow and attempts to follow his line of thought.
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