Just an Ordinary Day

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

In fact, the world did look like a picture from a child’s book about the Arctic. The sun was just edging over the horizon, and the ice sparkled in its first long rays. The bergs looked dazzling white, pink, mauve, deep blue, depending on how the rays hit them and how the shadows fell. The sea was now bright blue, and little chunks of ice, some no bigger than a man’s fist, bobbed in the choppy water. Overhead, the eastern sky was gold and blue, promising a lovely day. The shadows of night lingered in the west.

A Night to Remember, Walter Lord, page 129

Background

A Night to Remember is a remarkable account of one of the greatest disasters of the 20th century, the sinking of the Titanic. The author begins the story the moment the ship struck the iceberg, and he re-created what he calls “the last night of a small town” through interviews with more than 60 survivors. This paragraph comes near the end of the story, when the last of the lifeboats are being rescued by the Carpathia, Titanic’s sister ship.

What makes it wonderful?

The sun rose over New York City on September 12, 2001.

The sun rose over Pearl Harbor on December 8th, 1941.

The sun rose over the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912.

One of the constants of history is how every tragedy is accompanied by mundanity.

No matter what terrible thing happens the day before, the sun will rise the next day. The birds will chirp. The wind will blow. The rain will fall. The clock’s hands will keep ticking with every second gone, and its bells will keep chiming with every hour passed.

And even as our world is falling apart, the world around us keeps marching on.

I had a football coach who always used to say, “time and tide wait for no man.”

He was trying to get us to move faster toward the practice field, but his words apply to situations like these as well.

That’s exactly what the author was capturing in this paragraph. Despite the horror of the night before, the sun didn’t rise any differently. Its rays didn’t reflect off the ice any less beautifully. The ocean didn’t cease to be blue. The day ahead didn’t press pause just like the night behind didn’t wait to disappear.

The author grounded this tragedy in reality. He made it feel like any other tragedy we’ve experienced in our lives, so we could get a glimpse of how it felt to be there. It looked like any other day, but it felt like a weight too heavy for anyone to bear.

Let's get technical

Everything I explained above is a perfect example of juxtaposition, the practice of putting contrasting concepts side by side to highlight the differences between them.

In this case, the horror of a shipwreck contrasted with the beauty of morning. The finality of death contrasted with the continuity of sunrise. The ending of night contrasted with the beginning of day.

Which brings me to the next technique the author used—metaphor. He ends the paragraph saying, “Overhead, the eastern sky was gold and blue, promising a lovely day. The shadows of night lingered in the west.”

And this was literally true, of course. But it was also figuratively true. The sun rising in the east represented a second chance at life for the survivors as much as the shadows fading in the west represented a life snuffed out for the victims.

In a single paragraph, the author did a brilliant job of stacking four techniques—juxtaposition, simile, metaphor, and imagery—to deliver an unmatched experience for us as readers.

So many takeaways we could cover here, but I’ll try to keep it simple. First, when you’re conveying a foreign experience to your readers, find a way to make it familiar. And second, some of the best writing we’ve studied together is a product of stacking techniques in a classic 1+1=3 fashion. If you can keep these things in mind, the words you put on the page will be wonderful as well.

Happy writing,

Joe