Using Parts Of Speech: Nouns

Oct 31

Didion:
There were eventually other clues to adult life to be found in my mother’s boxes. There was the white silk shirt strewn with star-shaped silver sequins that she wore when my father was stationed at Peterson Field in Colorado Springs and she took me ice-skating at the Broadmoor Hotel. There was her petit-point evening bag. There was the plaid seersucker suit in which she crossed the country by train when, en route to meet my father in North Carolina in 1942, we traveled from Los Angeles to New Orleans on the Southern Pacific’s Sunset Limited, a transcontinental train so crowded in those early days of World War II that my mother and small brother and I spent much of the trip standing in the couplings between the cars. (128)

Concrete Nouns: mother’s boxes, shirt, sequins, father, Peterson Field, Colorado Springs, Broadmoor Hotel, Sunset Limited, bag, suit, country, train, couplings, cars (14)

Abstract Nouns: clues, adult life (2)

Rodriguez:
There were many times like the night at a brightly lit gasoline station (a blaring white memory) when I stood uneasily, hearing my father. He was talking to a teenaged attendant. I do not recall what they were saying, but I cannot forget the sounds my father made as he spoke. At one point his words slid together to form one word —sounds as confused as the threads of blue and green oil in the puddle next to my shoes.His voice rushed through what he had left to say. (90)

Concrete Nouns: night, station, attendant, sounds, father, words, threads, oil, puddle, shoes, voice, reply, chance, grasp, hand, shoulder, dark (17)

Abstract Nouns: times, memory, point (3)

My findings here are broadly consistent with the initial hypothesis of overall noun count and the proportional relationship between concrete and abstract noun volume that we see in other passages from both authors.