“Memorable openers of the great authors”Indranil Sarkar

Reading is a primitive human habit. Man

possesses an instinctive and insatiable thirst for knowledge. He wants to see the unseen; know

the unknown. Books provide the easiest means to satisfy this eternal thirst of man. In European

World Reading began as early as the 8th century. According to Francis Bacon a man becomes a

‘full’ or ‘complete’ man only through reading books. Reading makes a full man. In a way

everything we have achieved so far has been the outcome of reading books. Books are the

carriers of wisdom as Milton says ‘Books are the life-blood’ of creative personalities. Beginning

with Renaissance, almost all the human movements have been fostered by reading.

With the emergence of newer and cheaper ways of publications the world of books has become

an infinite one while erstwhile materialism and present day Globalization have drastically

snatched man’s time to read. The alternative Mass Medias are also playing negative roles in this

regard. As a result man has been suffering from various incongruities. He can not afford to read

even a fraction of world’s wisdom. As a result he has to be selective while choosing a book for

his reading.

However, the problem is not a new one. In the primitive world also man could not invest his

whole life in reading only. He has to be selective in this regard. He must select the book that

satisfies his personal likes and dislikes. As such the writers are also using different techniques at

different times to hand over the most desired book to a particular reader.In16th and 17 th

century, the writers used to provide a sub-title in addition to the actual title to convey the

reader a thematic hint of his book. Shakespeare did not write his plays for reading as such

disinterested in giving sub-titles in general. But, the custom was so much in vogue that even the

Bard could not maintain his abhorrence to sub-titles. He also submitted to the custom and

provided sub-titles to two of his plays---Twelfth Night and Henry viii. The sub-title of 'Twelfth

Night' was 'What You Will" and the sub-title of Henry VIII was 'All is True'. He, most probably

parodied the custom. Any way, it has been noticed since Jane Austen that a memorable

opening sentence has most helpful avenue to find the proper reader. An impressive opening

sentence helps generate curiosity in the mind of a reader and thus a perfect match between

the book and its reader is achieved.

Let’s recall a few memorable literary works which have become timeless just because of their

opening sentences. First lines are always crucial in any narrative, whether novels, films, novellas and

especially short fiction. They are what decide whether one feels like reading or watching ahead, are

gripped at the earliest stage possible and immediately engaged with the world of the narrative.

Of course, the list begins with Jane Austen’s opener in ‘Pride and Prejudice’. ‘ It is a truth

universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife –

Jane Austen’. (Pride and Prejudice, 1813). The ironical opening sentence has been causing

sleeplessness to the intellectual world all over the globe even after two hundred years of its

first publication. The problem has become equivalent to the unsolved philosophical question of

‘Hen and Egg: which came first, the Hen or the Egg? What is more justified: a wealthy young

man is in need of a wife or a young girl is in need of a suitable husband?

The next is definitely from Dickens’s pen. ‘A Tale of Two cities’ begins with the unforgettable words

narrating the age and the background of French Revolution: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of

times. It was the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief; it was the

epoch of incredulity. It was the season of Light; it was the season of Darkness. It was the spring of hope;

it was the winter of despair’. (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859).

The third is obviously from the pen of Leo Tolstoy. His Anna Karenina begins with the wise observation

of material world: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’. (Leo

Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877).The wisdom in the sentence produces hypnotic desire to read the book in

a single breath.

Next, is from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851).Here the hero identifies himself by uttering a brief

sentence: ‘Call me Ishmael’.

James Joyce’s ‘Portrait of the artist as a young man’ (1916) possesses many technical specialties in

addition to its stream of consciousness phenomenon. But the most memorable is the fantastic opening

sentence: “Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the

road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nice little boy named baby tuckoo.”

Similarly, the opener ‘It was a pleasure to burn‘, in Ray Bradbury’s, Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is unique in its

inherent meaning. It possesses the valence of a publicity caption to be used by some armament industry

some day.

Next one comes from Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch-22’(1961).The opener ‘It was love at first sight’ recalls

Shakespearean Romances and the reader opens the book with an expectation of getting the taste of

Shakespearean love in a modern novel after 350 years.

Maya Angelou’s opener in ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ “When I was three and Bailey four, we had

arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed – ‘To Whom It May

Concern’ – that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to

Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson,” simply makes the reader spellbound.

The opening sentence ‘All children, except one, grow up’ of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1902) simply evokes

the curiosity of knowing the story of the child who did not grow up.

Similarly, the opening sentence ‘Death is only the beginning; afterward comes the hard part’ in Jed

Rubenfeld’s ‘The Death Instinct’ (2010), infuses the desire in the reader’s mind to know a little more

about the unknown horizon of Death where every man to go some day.

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