Final answer:
Word choice, or diction, significantly affects how readers perceive a text. Words like 'perfect' can evoke admiration, while 'struck' suggests violence. Poets like Pound and Williams stress the importance of choosing each word carefully to convey the intended impact.
Step-by-step explanation:
Analyzing the effect of word choice on the reader is crucial for understanding a text's impact. In the provided excerpts, we can see the power of specific words such as perfect and struck. Perfect evokes a sense of admiration and the unreal, fostering tension since perfection is often unattainable. Conversely, struck imparts a sense of violence and sudden change, heavily influencing the reader's reaction.
Renowned poets like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams emphasized the importance of precise diction. Pound advocated for the elimination of superfluous words, urging poets to choose adjectives that reveal something significant. Williams similarly urged writers to cut unnecessary words, likening it to seamless sewing—an art of skilled craftsmanship. This focus on word economy stresses the importance of every single word in a literary piece.
Adjectives and adverbs, while offering color and detail, are less impactful than subjects and verbs, which should carry the meaning in a story. In narrative passages or poetry, words like plucked or struck shape how readers envision the described scenes, characters, and their significance.