The Gallery of Errors · Specimen 901

A Dark and Stormy Night

Edward Bulwer-Lytton · Paul Clifford · Opening sentence

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It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional

intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the

streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops,

and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the

darkness.

Thesis of failureEvery image is issued and immediately recalled. The sentence hedges, digresses, and decorates until the storm it announces has nothing left to do.

OccasionA novel's threshold, squandered. The most infamous opening in English fiction, and the patron sentence of purple prose.

PersonaA narrator determined to be atmospheric and unwilling to stop qualifying long enough to manage it.

Device index

Hover a card to trace its span in the passage; click to pin its dossier card.

Tropes

Bathosthe instant retraction

An unintended collapse from the elevated to the flat.

Pathetic Fallacyunearned

Granting nature human feeling.

Schemes

Parenthesisfatally placed

An inserted aside breaking syntactic flow.

Cumulative Sentencerunaway

A main clause extended by trailing modifiers.

Syntax

Qualification Cascade

Reflexive hedging that dilutes every assertion as it is made.

Full dossier

1The Autopsy

One sentence, five lines, and not one clause allowed to finish its work. The order of failure: first the hedge (torrents, retracted), then the digression (London, announced), then the decoration (lamps, ensouled). Three separate faults, each more self-indulgent than the last. The grammar is sound throughout — that is the lesson. Nothing here is a mistake of syntax. Every fault is a decision.

2The Repair

Strip the exceptions, remove the parenthesis, and let one image stand: "The night was dark and stormy. Rain swept the London streets in gusts, and the lamps guttered." Two sentences, one commitment each. The reader now knows the city, the weather, and — from what is no longer there — that the author trusts them.