The first paragraph of the text “Diogenes and Alexander” by Gilbert Highet is a pure narrative. However, in this very first paragraph we cannot recognize the name of the seeming protagonist for the author uses only “he” to refer to the person in question. Three places are mentioned in the first paragraph, from the roadside through the market to the home. In these three places the protagonist’s respective actions are “told” by the author. At the roadside, when the protagonist woke up, the author tells the consecutive actions of the protagonist. In turn, I can say that the telling of the consecutive actions forms into a showing of the protagonist’s behaviors in an effect just like a primitive film. One sentence, which recalls the protagonist’s meeting in the past of a boy who drank water with hands, is made up to explain why the protagonist in this morning washed food down with handfuls of water in the preceding sentence. Apart from the pure narrative, the author also intervenes with some commentary sentences. The the scene moves to the market where the protagonist’s only action was “stroll through it”. In this place, other actions are introduced, but they are the actions of other people. The communications or interacts occured in the market. All the sentences about this place are simple telling. Semicolon is employed to make up clauses concerning people’s different actions. Commmentary sentences are also used but they are not the author’s but those of the people and of the protagonnist, functioning as evaluations respectively. The last sentence suddenly shifts the scence to the protagonist’s home, suggesting that he has arrived at home from the market.

The second paragraph mainly concerns the protagonist’s “interior arguments” for his lifestyle after he entered his shelter, and most of his arguments are presented in a form of the direct thought, employing four sentences, the first one being a rhetorical question, the second one consisting of three clauses divided by two semicolons, the third one using a colon to introduce an explanation for its main clause and the last one using a parenthesis to introduce an explanation. And the first three arguments in the direct thought concerns what a person should abandon while the last argument is about what one can have―only a simple garment and a shelter. Two obvious differences lies between the direct discourse and the indirect discourse―that of the tenses and that of the pronouns. Then it shifts from the recording of thought into the pure narrative again. It is in the second half section that the protagonist’s name is revealed―Diogenes, which makes the first paragraph more like a presentation of the beginning of a film. And in the second half, the author also reveals Diogenes’ pursuit and his life, making the above-mentioned morning routine of that day embodied in a larger context.

One thing evokes my further thinking, namely the hut where Diogenes lived. In the first paragraph concerning the outside world, there is no hint of Diogenes’ thought. It is after he entered his hut or shelter that he began to make comtemplation. Thus a house and the like, even including Diogenes’ cask can serve as a metaphor or a symbol.