How often, when we speak, is there a pause? In a conversation it seems natural, yet in novels there is almost never a long pause or break in between pages. Although there is nothing said in these pauses, they are purposeful and having a greater meaning. In the novel A Visit From The Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan teaches us there are multiple meanings to a pause, and when in context, it can have as much of an effect as a sentence. Egan demonstrates that a pause is ironic, can have visual structure, and contains syntax
The first way Egan uses a pause is by creating irony with it. After Alison’s father and brother fight over the meaning of a pause, in which her father credits a pause as wasteful, Alison creates a slide with large bubble of blank text…show more content… This whole chapter is made of slides with charts, speech bubbles and diagrams. This slide is unique. It is a large rectangle that takes up almost the whole page. This shows how large a pause is. When in a fight with someone the silence can be suffocating, almost unbearable. Egan demonstrates this with making the box fill up as large of the slide as possible. Another noticeable thing about the pause is it’s soft edges. The soft edges show that the silence was not harsh. Although it takes place after a fight, they don’t hate Drew. Sasha, Lincoln, and Alison have each found meaning in pauses, so they struggle to teach someone who doesn't. understand. The shape of the box holding the pause, gives meaning to the pause. It tells us that even though the pause was long, it held no…show more content… Though syntax is defined as “the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language” according to Webster’s dictionary, a pause is similar to a well-formed sentence and is when an author chooses to arrange words by not including any. The pause is silence, not only among Drew’s family, but also for the reader. It gives you the time to digest what Sasha and Lincoln the meaning of a pause is. Had Egan decided to move on to the next slide, we wouldn’t have been able to hear the silence. There is a lot of emotion behind this pause. You can feel Drew contemplating his opinion, and Sash’s silent fury. You can imagine Lincoln sitting on the deck, crying because his father doesn’t understand the most important thing to him, and Alison stuck there in the middle, trying not to take a side because she understands both. By not using any words, Egan creates a moment of still. It is the calm after the storm. Her syntax allows the reader to absorb all the information from the previous slides, and feel the emotions of Sasha and Drew’s
