Maggie Madej

Dr. Cochran

English 189H

October 20th, 2020

Emphasis through Style in the Only Good Indians

““Are you okay—?” Peta says, eyes fixed on him, stepping down the ladder without looking, probably

concerned that he’s hurt himself bad enough to go into shock, and that’s how it happens, that’s why it

happens: because she’s worried he might be cut somewhere.“ (123)

In The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones creates a unique style to his writing, involving

em dashes, italics, and colons. He draws attention to numerous parts of the same sentence in different

ways, which is what makes his writing style so unique.

The use of the em dash in the above sentence, on the surface, creates a blank space in the page.

This also forces a pause in when reading the very first sentence of a very daunting paragraph. He starts

the paragraph off on a weird note with the em dash and an uncomfortable amount of pausing. The use of

an em dash vs an en dash is just a matter of length in the pause, which shows that the reader is supposed

to be drawn to the question mark at the end of the sentence. Usually, following an em dash there is

something important or something other than just a punctuation mark. The em dash in this case is used to

emphasize the question mark following it, which in turn should lead to an unsettling and questioning

pause.

Analogously, Jones chooses to make the word “why” italicized to create an emphasis on that

word. In the preceding part of this sentence, it is mentioned about how something happens, and then

immediately following that the reader is confronted with the word why italicized. This makes the word

“why” stand out not only because it is different from the word “how”, but because it is written in this

stylistic way. Normally, italics are used just for titles or names, but in this case, it is completely a stylistic

choice that draws attention the this very important word in the sentence.
 This same sort of attention to detail can be seen when looking deep into the usage of a colon in

this excerpt. The purpose of a colon is to signal to the reader that a very important part of the sentence is

coming up. In this case, it points out the fact that Peta is worried about Lewis, which later in the

paragraph becomes important to note because she is the one who ends up getting hurt. The usage of a

colon is used in this instance as an element of foreshadowing.

The author Stephen Graham Jones continuously creates an emphatic tone through the novel The

Only Good Indians through the usage of multiple punctuational and stylistic elements: such as an em

dash, italics, and colons.