Descriptive and Simple
Sedgwick doesn't like to beat around the bush. He tells it like it is—no frills, and no nonsense. The dialogue between the characters is oftentimes direct and to the point, which is fitting since there's no time for long, breathtaking soliloquies when there is work to be done or it's so cold outside that people die from frost. So when Einar dies, this is all Anna offers her brother:
"Have faith. Be brave, Sig." (4.1)
So much for a long eulogy or a tear-filled walk down memory lane. But while Sig's family may use few words, Sedgwick makes up for it by describing their surroundings in detail. Take, for example, when we learn about Sig's house:
Their cabin. Their entire world, a single room, twenty-four feet by twelve, plus the four feet square of the entrance hall, where the boots and coats waited until it was time for them to work again, and the larder room, which was behind the other inner door in the hall. The larder room, which as well as holding all their food, candles, soap, tools, and spare cloth, was at night home to Sig, who'd taken to sleeping curled up on the sacks of flour. At least it was a little inside space of his own. (2.11)
Now that's a lot of information for a house. But it's not just the house we're learning about here. Did you notice how we get a glimpse of what their life is like up in the cabin too? We learn that Sig sleeps on the sacks of flour in the larder room, and that the whole family is crammed in a small space. The style might be sparse when it comes to the characters and their communication, but we're never short-changed when it comes to how everything looks and feels around them.