THE ARTICLE AND ITS STYLISTIC POTENTIAL

The article may be a very expressive element of narration especially when used with proper names.

For example, the indefinite article may convey evaluative connotations when used with a proper name:

I'm a Marlow by birth, and we are a hot-blooded family. (Follett)

It may be charged with a negative evaluative connotation and diminish the importance of someone's personality, make it sound insignificant.

Besides Rain, Nan and Mrs. Prewett, there was a Mrs. Kingsley, the wife of one of the Governors. (Dolgopolova)

A Forsyte is not an uncommon animal. (Galsworthy)

The definite article used with a proper name may become a powerful expressive means to emphasize the person's good or bad qualities.

Well, she was married to him. And what was more she loved him. Not 'be Stanley whom everyone saw, not the everyday one; but a timid, sensitive, innocent Stanley who knelt down every night to say his Prayers... (Dolgopolova)

You are not the Andrew Manson I married. (Cronin)

In the first case the use of two different articles in relation to one person throws into relief the contradictory features of his character.

The second example implies that this article embodies all the good qualities that Andrew Manson used to have and lost in the eyes of his wife.

The definite article in the following example serves as an intensifier of the epithet used in the character's description:

My good fellow, I said suavely, what brings me here is this: I want to see the evening sun go down over the snow-tipped Sierra Nevada. Within the hour he had spread this all over the town and I was pointed out for the rest of my visit as the mad Englishman. (Atkinson)

The definite article may contribute to the devices of gradation or help create the rhythm of the narration as in the following examples:

But then he would lose Sondra, his connections here, and his uncle—this world! The loss! The loss! The loss! (Dreiser)

No article, or the omission of article before a common noun conveys a maximum level of abstraction, generalization.

The postmaster and postmistress, husband and wife,...looked carefully at every piece of mail... (Erdrich)

How infuriating it was! Land which looked like baked sand became the Garden of Eden if only you could get water. You could draw a line with a pencil: on one side, a waterless barren; on the other, an irrigated luxuriance. (Michener)

They went as though car and driver were one indivisible whole. (Dol-gopolova)

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