A Falling Piano

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

The impact of an attacking tiger can be compared to that of a piano falling on you from a second-story window. But unlike the piano, the tiger is designed to do this, and the impact is only the beginning.

The Tiger, John Vaillaint, page 270

Background

The Tiger is the true story of a man eating tiger terrorizing the people of a tiny town in remote Russia. The entire book is a buildup to the five page finale where the group of men hunting the beast finally encounter him. These sentences are a prelude to the finale.

What makes it wonderful?

This book was filled with incredible descriptions of tigers and their capabilities. When you hear what a tiger can do, you first think it’s a mythical beast, not a real animal that shares our world.

I already shared the vivid picture Vaillant paints of the tiger’s appearance.

And I already shared the crime-scene description of what was left from the tiger’s first victim.

I also underlined another fact I couldn’t believe: [a male tiger] could weigh close to five hundred pounds, and yet [have] the explosive power to make a standing leap over a ten-foot fence, or across a residential street.

After reading these unbelievable facts again, and again, and again, I finally began to believe them. But the belief required the same repetition as learning a language or playing an instrument—again, and again, and again.

But these words. What made these words wonderful? For me it was the chuckle factor.

I imagined a Looney Tunes character watching a piano fall from above and smash him on the sidewalk below. Flattened like a pancake or indented into the sidewalk like a body melting into a memory foam mattress.

And of course, no piano is built to fall from a second story window. But as Vaillant writes, a tiger is. And that freight-train-like impact is the mildest of the imminent terrors.

So the chuckle factor got me here, but after that chuckle, I was also nodding my head thinking, “he’s making a joke, but he’s also totally serious.”

Damn tigers are amazing.

Let's get technical

Vaillant uses a combination of imagery and analogy here to help the reader understand the magnitude of the tiger’s magnificence.

The imagery is of the piano falling from a window, crushing your bones to dust. It’s a vivid description that evokes a picture in your mind.

The analogy is also the piano falling. It’s a comparison of the force of the flying tiger to the force of the falling baby grand. But it’s a comparison to make a point: a tiger will fuck you up.

Now that we’ve seen a number of examples from this book, an important pattern emerges. When you’re explaining something to a reader—something that is hard to wrap their mind around—you need to repeat yourself. Not literally. That’s boring. But make the same point, in different ways, at different times. Describe the tiger’s appearance. Describe the remains of the tiger’s victims. Describe the supernatural feats a tiger can accomplish with ease. And through this subtle repetition, your readers will slowly see the surreal reality you’re laying before them.

Happy writing,

Joe