Sheer cliffs, sheer terror, don't walk there Edgar!

"Don't walk there Edgar!" I found myself thinking just that so often during a few portions of the first half of Edgar Huntly and often, during the second half to completion of the Charles Brockden Brown's story.

Page 152: "My return to sensation and to consciousness took place in no much tranquil scene. I emerged from oblivion by degrees so slow and so faint, that their succession cannot be marked. When enabled at length to attend to the information which my senses afforded, I was conscious of a time, for a time, of nothing but existence. It was unaccompanied with lassitude or pain, but I felt disinclined to stretch my limbs, or raise my eye-lids. My thoughts were wildering and mazy, and though consciousness were present, it was disconnected with the loco-motive or voluntary power."

Summary: Edgar slowly regains consciousness and with it, many painful sensations of various kinds and degrees, but soft! he has no recollection of how he arrived at the darkness, became hurt, who or what caused his unconsciousness. It takes a period of time for him to mentally process his state and once he does, he moves even more slowly, because what he discovers next about himself, he really didn't really want to know.

Edgar begins his awareness of arriving somehow in the darkness that he soon discovers is a cave, "My return to sensation. . ." which immediately and without permission, engages the reader and forces them in a subliminal way, to begin feeling and speculating. As a human being, we cannot read the words "return" and "sensation" without beginning the process of asking questions and experiencing a sensation ourselves. Why is that?

Use of the words, ". . .return to sensation," could be called creating imagery, by choosing words which makes the reader react automatically with a memory of their own or a memory of some type of sensation.

When a reader sees the word, "sensation," it's a muscle reflex reaction or another piece of imagery at work. The word "sensation" takes the reader, without permission, right into sensations or memories of sensations of their own. It's the type of word that elicits a physical reaction. Think of the word, "sky diving." What happens? It creates an automatic response.

The word "return" implies Edgar has been gone. It's human to begin speculating and wanting to fill in the blanks. If you are returning, Edgar, where have you been? If your sensations are returning, what did you lose, when, how and will you get those sensations back?

The more picturesque author may have simply said: "My jaw, ribs, head, arms are throbbing-are they broken? There is white-hot heat radiating from these places, and the pain. . . Are my ribs and legs broken? Why can't I open my eyes? And where is the light? Where. ..am...I???"

What is gained by writing more picturesque or specifically, is finite knowledge. The reader is told what is happening. There is no need to speculate or imagine. You have been given the facts.

What is lost by writing in a more picturesque style is the reader will not necessarily become engaged in the reading because there is no stimuli or imagery to force engagement. There is no need for the reader's imagination to conjure up the types of injuries, circumstances, because they have already been told.

It's a more passive style of reading; a more active style of writing. The author can spell out without ambiguity, what is taking place. The reader is able to "flow" through the reading-writing with less pause, greater understanding, less need to analyze and no invitation particularly, to participate in the story.
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