Have you read the Bible?

Verse 11:

On hearing the Philistine?s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.


This is a better example of an explanation, but it it is still easy to correct. I have never seen this sort of fear myself, but people I know, who served in Vietnam or Afghanistan, tell me that when people are afraid, they don't get enough sleep. Rather than having the narrator tell the reader that the soldiers were afraid, David could observe their sleep-deprived, clammy skin or their bloodshot eyes.

We could also say that David is an explanation in the way that Mr 888 used the word. David must have broken every commandment. That makes him an explanation or example of how, as Kermit T Frog might say, that it's not easy being human. In fact, in might be harder than being green.

I can hear Ms H reading this and saying, "Now Janie, you know that a chunk paragraph must have five sentences, so you lose one point.

I agree that we have learned more about being Buddhist from Tariki's example than we ever learned or could have learned in school.

Yeah, she might have said that, but she complained more about 300-word sentences. "Jane, who are you; the reincarnated James Baldwin? Don't you believe in periods!"

I've been trying to think of examples of explanation. I've got this list.

The beginning of (maybe just the first chapter) of Hemingway?s The Sun also Rises and the chapters in his For Whom the Bell Tolls, which don?t deal with the Band of Pablo, might be good examples.

The chapter about Georgia politics in Gone With the Wind might be another.

The first chapter of Moby d*** by Melville is an essay about New York City. It has nothing to do with anything in the novel.

The Jungle by Sinclair is one long explanation, but maybe not if it's a collection of essays and short stories.

In the Middle of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hugo stops to write a essay on the buildings of Paris.

Some people might think of the The Letter to the Hebrews in the Bible as an explanation because it speculates about the meaning of characters like David or Jacob, but it is not an author explaining his writing. It?s really criticism by the author of Hebrews of the authors of the Old Testament.

The first chapter of The Red Badge of Courage looks like an explanation, It?s something like the beginning of 1 Samuel 17. Like Niki wants to do with David, Crane did with Henry Fleming. Crane lets Henry inspect the future field of battle just like David might have as he arrived at Saul?s camp.

The Bible has little if any of these kinds of explanations. The Bible just tells the stories.