Page 152 - Wordsmith A Guide to College Writing
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Focus on Introducing the Essay: A
Look at the Hook
First Lines from Classic Novels
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from
uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in
his bed into a gigantic insect.
—Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis (1915)
I am an invisible man.
—Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning
mist; austere towers of steel and cement and
limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver
rods.
—Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)
As any novelist knows, the first line of any book is crucial.
George Orwell’s “It was a bright cold day in April, and the
clocks were striking thirteen” in 1984 or Herman Melville’s “Call
me Ishmael” in Moby-Dick are among some of the most
famous. They demonstrate how first lines can hook a reader
into reading the next sentence, and the next, and the next.
