Parataxis: Creating and Critiquing It

Introduction to Parataxis

Parataxis is a literary device characterized by the juxtaposition of independent clauses or phrases in a text without the use of coordinating conjunctions or subordinating elements.

It creates a succinct and immediate narrative style, often emphasizing the equal importance of each component and conveying a sense of rapidity or urgency.

Parataxis can be employed to achieve various effects, such as highlighting fragmented thoughts, intensifying the emotional impact of a narrative, or conveying a sense of spontaneity in storytelling.

How to Create Parataxis

Step	Explanation	Practical Example
Identify Key Elements	Determine the phrases, clauses, or ideas you want to convey independently within your writing.	Identifying the characters’ emotions: “Joy, sorrow, anger.”
Remove Conjunctions	Omit coordinating conjunctions (e.g., “and,” “but,” “or”) and subordinating elements (e.g., relative pronouns) that typically connect these elements.	Original: “She ran quickly and reached the door.” Paratactic: “She ran quickly, reached the door.”
Place Elements Side by Side	Position the identified elements or clauses directly next to each other, separated by punctuation marks or spaces.	Original: “He read a book that was thick.” Paratactic: “He read a book, thick.”
Consider Punctuation	Utilize punctuation marks (e.g., semicolons, commas, dashes) to signal the separation between elements and maintain clarity.	“The sky darkened; the rain poured down.”
Vary Sentence Length	Experiment with varying the length of sentences or clauses to create rhythm and emphasis, as needed.	Creating emphasis: “Love, loss. Life, death.”
Review for Clarity	Ensure that the paratactic structure maintains clarity and coherence within the context of your writing.	Checking for clarity: “She laughed, danced, and sang.”
Adjust for Effect	Depending on your desired effect, consider the use of repetition, parallelism, or other stylistic choices to enhance the impact of your paratactic sentences.	Creating parallelism: “He enjoys reading, writing, and exploring.”
Edit and Revise	Carefully edit and revise your writing to refine the use of parataxis, ensuring it serves your overall narrative or rhetorical goals.	Reviewing for effectiveness: “The sun set; darkness enveloped the land.”

These steps and examples demonstrate how to apply parataxis in writing for various effects and how to ensure clarity and coherence in the resulting text.

Benefits of Using Parataxis in Writing:

1. Clarity: Parataxis makes writing more clear and concise by using simple sentence structures that place phrases or clauses side by side without using conjunctions.
2. Emphasis: Parataxis places elements side by side, creating emphasis on each individual element. This is useful for emphasizing the distinctness of different characters, settings, or events.
3. Rhythm: Parataxis creates a sense of rhythm in writing by using repetition, varying the length of phrases or clauses, and playing with punctuation. This contributes to the overall tone and pacing of a piece.
4. Immediacy: The use of parataxis creates a sense of immediacy or urgency in writing by creating short, direct sentences that convey action or emotion quickly.
5. Efficiency: Parataxis is an efficient way to convey information without adding unnecessary words or phrases. This is especially useful in genres such as poetry or flash fiction where brevity is key.

Parataxis and Literary Theory

Literary Theory	Critique of Parataxis	Example from Literature
Formalist Perspective	Parataxis can be seen as a way of emphasizing the form of a text, rather than its content. Formalists believe that the structure and style of a text are important in and of themselves, and that the use of parataxis can create specific effects that contribute to the overall meaning of the text.	In “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot, the use of parataxis creates a fragmented structure that emphasizes the disintegration of post-war society, highlighting the form’s significance in conveying the chaos and disillusionment of the era: “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain.”
Reader-Response Perspective	Parataxis can be interpreted in terms of how readers respond to the text. The use of parataxis can create a specific tone or mood in a text, which can affect how readers interpret and respond to it.	In The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, the paratactic narrative style allows readers to experience the fragmented consciousness of the characters, evoking emotional and psychological responses as readers grapple with the disorienting effect of the narrative structure: “I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire, I give it to you not only because you need it but because it smashes the dream of being immortal, and leaves you to make your way, where you can find some meaning, to your life.”
Feminist Perspective	Parataxis can be analyzed in terms of how it affects the representation of gender and power relations. Parataxis can be used to create a sense of fragmentation or disconnection, which can be used to critique dominant power structures.	In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, parataxis is employed to depict the inner thoughts and experiences of the female protagonist, challenging traditional narrative structures and giving voice to the inner lives of women, thereby critiquing societal expectations and power imbalances: “She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”
Postcolonial Perspective	Parataxis can be seen as a way of challenging dominant discourses and power structures. By placing disparate elements side by side, parataxis can create a sense of disjuncture that disrupts dominant narratives and encourages alternative perspectives.	In Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, parataxis is used to weave together diverse stories, languages, and cultures, challenging the colonial legacy and emphasizing the richness of postcolonial identity, thus offering a postcolonial critique of dominant narratives and a celebration of multiplicity: “I am the sum of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me.”

Suggested Readings

1. Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton, Columbia University Press, 1994.
2. Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by Jane E. Lewin, Cornell University Press, 1983.
3. Johnson, Barbara. The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.
4. McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. Routledge, 2003.
5. Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology. University of Nebraska Press, 2003.