Verbs with Verve
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)
Active verbs: found, strewn, wore, stationed, took, ice-skating, crossed, meet, traveled, crowded, spent, standing (12)
Passive verbs: (0)
Ing form: ice-skating, standing (2)
To be/nonexpletive forms: (0)
Expletives: There were, there was (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)
Active verbs: like, stood, hearing, recall, forget, made, spoke, slid, form, confused, rushed, say (12)
Passive verbs: was talking, were saying (2)
Ing form: hearing, talking, saying (3)
To be/nonexpletive forms: (0)
Expletives: There were, He was (2)
There’s little to distinguish between the results here, and the passages are near identical in verb volume and form analysis. Even though they come from different cultural backgrounds, they’re both paragraphs of cinematic reminiscence, and take us back to a world of childhood memory, but in their formal use of verbs, they are noticeably similar.
