More on greatest excerpts, I was going for like a specific scene where you felt the writing was some of the best and/or conveyed a strong message/emotions, of course kept somewhat nonspoilery within reason. I’d love to hear what you guys think!
Personal top five:
-
Final chapter of 1984. Don’t want to give to much away for those that haven’t read, but boy this chapter is brutal. It is a veryyyy unique chapter that I haven’t come across again in literature and it is so well done. Bravo to Orwell.
-
!Apache attack!< in Blood Meridian.
!Something about McCarthy’s prose is just insanely vivid and here we get this utterly terrifying depiction of a band of tribesmen stampeding towards our characters. This is probably what I would call the “best written” excerpt.!<
-
!Aftermath of the second (first on page) death!< in Lord of the Flies. Golding’s use of imagery here is just so beautiful and I’m a sucker for religious symbolism so this hit hard. It’s so terrifyingly peaceful and fits the character >!better than any other send off I’ve read. The final death is also expertly written.!<
-
!Eve reveals that she ate from the tree of knowledge!< in Paradise Lost.
!Milton summarizes humanity’s loss of pure love with the greying of a rose that falls from a wreath Adam is making for his love, Eve. Need I say more?!<
- Bridge to Terabithia… you know the moment. Of course this doesn’t hold up to the writing of the others but I’ve never been gut punched so hard by a book.
the suicide passage in Infinite Jest:
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
Damn, what a passage. Makes me wanna read this one asap!
When my brother killed himself 363 days ago, my ex introduced me to this passage, it was really helpful in trying to comprehend how what had happened could have happened. Amazing imagery, if nothing else.