In class on Monday, we were given the assignment to select a paragraph about LaMotte and Adeline and analyze why there was no dialog between them and then script our own dialog for them according to how our group thought they should speak in the situation -- I'm sure everyone remembers this. My group, however, chose not to participate in the second-half of the assignment, not because we were lazy or disinterested, but because we felt that writing dialog for the characters, particularly in the writing style of the novel, would not satisfy our earlier analysis of why there isn't dialog in the first place. We came up with this reason...
We didn't want to provide dialog because any time we tried to craft what we imagined the characters were saying, it came out impossibly cheesy and caused us to laugh and immediately take the characters and their situations less seriously. We judged the characters more harshly when there was speech because they were more ridiculous. They were frivolous; melodramatic, almost. Adeline's plight became less sympathetic, suddenly she wasn't a weeping angel but an unnecessarily and annoyingly hysterical girl that no one really wanted to deal with. LaMotte's chivalry decayed into awkward reassurances and his voiced confusion made him seem clumsy and incapable or if he was too quick to help, his confidence was almost suspicious in intent. This frustrated us and turned a graceful scene into a mockery.
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