Читать книгу Expository Writing - Mervin James Curl - Страница 10

The third consideration is, "Who is my reader, and what are his characteristics?" The counter-question, "What difference does it make who my reader is?" can be summarily answered with the statement that it makes a great deal of difference. As soon as you note what a large part temperament plays in the forming of opinions in politics and religion and social questions, and remember that no two people ever react to any truth in exactly the same way—that what seems to one sensible person monstrous will appear to another equally sensible person as highly virtuous—you will see that in all writing, where either the understanding or the emotions are involved, this question assumes importance. If we believe the theory with which we set out, that all writing is done to accomplish an object, that is, a certain effect in the reader's mind, and then remember that different readers take different trails to the same objective, and that some must be even coaxed back from one trail into another, we shall see that it is vital that the reader do not select the wrong way, and, like a futile dog, "bark up the wrong tree." A hasty glance at current magazines will at once show how operative this consideration is in practical writing: The Atlantic Monthly uses a different set of subjects and a different style of expression from that of The Scientific American or The Black Cat or The Parisienne. The editors, in other words, are remembering who their readers are and are trying to meet them with gifts, not with weapons of offense. After all, the reader is always the destination of all writing; the place where the effect will be made is the reader's mind.

To apply this third consideration to our two subjects, the value of a college education and the aeroplane, let us see how the treatment should differ according to the differing readers. If, in the treatment of the first subject, we are presenting our statements to a body of educators, even though the facts of college education remain unmoved, and though our personal leaning toward the supreme value in dowering the student with the wisdom of the past is unchanged, we shall yet see that these educators have already thought as we have about the matter, that merely to repeat to them will be futile and wearying; and we shall, if we are wise, change the point of attack and develop the value as enabling the student to apply to practical problems the wisdom of the past. Or, if the readers are to be politicians whom we wish to enlist in sympathy with larger endowments, we shall perhaps treat the subject as being increased political insight and sympathy with all people. In the treatment of the aeroplane, if we are presenting our words to engineers, we shall probably analyze the present lack of proper engine power and try to suggest means of correction. And we shall make our presentation in language that has not been stripped of its technicalities but has been allowed to stand in engineering terms. But if we address a body of benevolent women who are trying to organize an "Airmen's Relief Fund," and who look upon the machine with horror as a potential destroyer of life, we shall simply show that accidents may be caused through faulty engines which may often result in loss of life. The original controlling purpose will now appear, "The value of a college education lies in its offering the best chance for personal development through showing to the student his heirship to all the wisdom of the ages past, especially as this is applied to present-day problems," or, "The aeroplane is a machine of great potential efficiency not yet completely understood, especially as regards the driving power, through which lack of understanding grave accidents may occur."

Now if we scan these two statements carefully, I believe that we shall be persuaded of their inadequacy. To explain to the benevolent women who are interested in saving lives the fact that we do not yet fully understand the aeroplane, is like attempting to persuade a man from the path of an oncoming thunderous locomotive by telling him of the lack of laws to regulate public safety. In other words, we have forgotten that a wedge makes the easiest entrance, and we have attacked on far too broad a front, have failed to whittle away the chips that are of no value to the reader. Perhaps we need a complete restatement of the controlling purpose, occasioned by the nature of the reader. We may say that the value of a college education is in enabling a student to be of service to the state by applying the wisdom of the past, or that the aeroplane, partly through our ignorance of it, is causing terrible accidents. These purposes are far different from those with which we started out. All are perfectly true; these are better adapted to our particular readers, are more useful in helping to accomplish our selected aim. The gist of the matter is this: wisdom in writing demands that we discover the special loophole through which our readers regard the subject and then bring our material within the view from that loophole, bearing in mind always the training and the prejudices of the reader, and conforming material to suit the special needs.

One large reason why college themes are liable to dullness is the fact that few students write for any one in particular. They merely put down colorless facts which do not stir a reader in the slightest. They forget that facts exist, really, only as they relate to people, individual people, and that they must be clothed attractively, as is virtue for a child's consumption, or the reader will have none of them. Even the patient writer of themes should regard a specially chosen reader as at the same time his best friend and his potentially worst enemy: friend in the sense of recipient of literary gifts, and enemy in the sense of possible foiler of all the author's good intentions. As enemy the reader must be conquered, must be made to read and understand; as friend he is to be sympathetically met and smiled upon. And if there be no reader determined by the circumstances, the writer should choose some well-known friend and adapt his material to that friend, or should select any ordinarily intelligent being and use the widest appeal that he can.