Читать книгу Expository Writing - Mervin James Curl - Страница 15

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Despite whatever of good has been said here about the controlling purpose, there may lurk the suspicion that it is, after all, dangerous, that perhaps it gives to a piece of writing a tendency toward bias, partial interpretation, even unfairness, and that it makes toward incompleteness. In the first place, in answering this charge, we must remember that facts as related to people are eternally subject to different interpretations according to shifting significance, which is determined largely by the individual to whom the facts are related. In the second place we have to remind ourselves that seldom does a writer try to say all that can be said about his subject. Much is always either implied or left to another piece of writing. And finally, even when an author attempts perfect completeness and objectivity, he usually addresses his work to some one in particular, even though the "some one" is as vague as the general reading public; and that some one has a particular attitude that must be borne in mind.

In "Solemn-Looking Blokes" not everything about the subject is said. From one point of view the tramp of American feet in London streets signified that the United States had emerged from its traditional aloofness and had joined the main current of the world; from another, that a tremendous military preparation was going on in America, the first fruits of which were those solemn ringing steps; from another, that however Europe had professed to despise American power, she was now willing, eager, to accept American aid; from another, that the old enmity between England and America has been forgotten in the common bond of like ideals and racial traditions. Each of these possible meanings—and there are more not listed here—is implied in the treatment actually given to the subject. No one of them is really developed. Instead, we have flowering before us the idea that the world is to be made safe for democracy. No one would presume to declare that the total possibilities of the subject are here met and explained; yet no one can rightly say that the chosen treatment is unfair. Considering the facts, the author, and the people who would read the article, and their emotional connection with the facts, we see that the author chose the purpose that seemed most useful—to make American hearts warm to the fact that their country was helping to make the world safer for all men everywhere. In other words, facts are useful only in so far as they accomplish some definite end, which, in writing, is to make the reader see the truth as the author thinks that he should try to make the reader see it.

Now, of course, if the writer makes an unfair analysis, if he blindly or willfully falsifies in seeing or expressing his subject, his writing is not only useless but actually vicious. The analysis must be correct. Every subject has its center of truth, which can be discovered by patient clear thinking; if the thinking be either unclear or impatient, the interpretation will be false. If the author of "Solemn-Looking Blokes" has made an incorrect estimate, his writing is futile. There is no more challenging quest than the search for the real truth at the core of a chosen subject. Perhaps the very difficulty of attaining success is what has stayed many minds in floundering, timid, fogginess.

As to the charge that infusion of emotional quality into the writing produces bias, first of all it must be said that if the subject contains no emotion, none should be attempted in the writing. In a report, for example, of the relative value of different woods for shingles, an author will hardly try to infuse emotion, for the reader wishes to learn, quickly and easily, just what kind of wood is the best. But most subjects are not thus aloof; even the report about shingles becomes of vast significance to the owner of extensive timber lands which are suddenly found to be of high value. All subjects which concern the prosperity and happiness of humanity are charged with emotion; the nearer to the great facts of life, such as birth, marriage, death, food, shelter, love, hatred, the keener the emotion. Who shall write of problems of heredity and leave us unstirred? Who shall treat of our vast irrigation projects, which turn the deserts into fair gardens and give food to millions of people, without firing the imagination? The writer's task is to look so clearly at his subject that he discovers its true value to both brain and heart.

As a matter of fact, in writing of such subjects a writer finds that words will be emotional, whether he will have them so or not, that they take sides, are charged with tendency and fly toward or away from an emotional quality with all the power of electricity. Now, this emotional quality, when it is uncontrolled, is dangerous. Words that show tendency must be guided with the firm hand lest they lead the reader into wrong impressions and into the confusion that comes from counter emotions, the strong impression of disunion. It is only by relating these cross-tendencies to a guiding idea that they can be made to serve the author's purpose. To choose wisely a controlling purpose that recognizes and handles the inherent emotions of words is merely to organize inescapable material. In the following selection from Emerson's "Fate" we find the emotional quality both high and well-organized. Such a paragraph might easily be made to confuse a reader hopelessly, but Emerson drives the chargers of his thought straight to his goal, intellectual and emotional, and holds tight his reins:

Nature is no sentimentalist,—does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman, but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,—these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs. You have just dined, and however the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity, expensive races—race living at the expense of race. The planet is liable to shocks from comets, perturbations from planets, rendings from earthquake and volcano, alterations of climate, precessions of equinoxes. Rivers dry up by opening of the forest. The sea changes its bed. Towns and counties fall into it. At Lisbon an earthquake killed men like flies. At Naples three years ago ten thousand persons were crushed in a few minutes. The scurvy at sea, the sword of the climate in the west of Africa, at Cayenne, at Panama, at New Orleans, cut off men like a massacre. Our western prairies shake with fever and ague. The cholera, the small-pox, have proved as mortal to some tribes as a frost to crickets, which, having filled the summer with noise, are silenced by the fall of the temperature of one night. Without uncovering what does not concern us, or counting how many species of parasites hang on a bombyx, or groping after intestinal parasites or infusory biters, or the obscurities of alternate generation,—the forms of the shark, the labrus, the jaw of the sea-wolf paved with crushing teeth, the weapons of the grampus, and other warriors hidden in the sea, are hints of ferocity in the interior of nature. Let us not deny it up and down. Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neck-cloth of a student in divinity.[6]

Now this controlling purpose, including both the appeal to the understanding and that to the emotions, should be stated, clearly, before the author begins his actual writing, in one sentence. The value of this is at once apparent: our minds tend all too much to wander from subject to subject, browsing here and there, without any really directed feeding. Now such procedure, though difficult to avoid, is nevertheless harmful to our writing. The edge of the writing is never so keen, the telling of the message, whatever it may be, is never so well done, until we thoroughly organize and direct all that we are to say. In phrasing the controlling purpose in one sentence, we make just such an organization. And we have one which is most easily handled, most easily remembered, least likely to allow us to escape into empty wandering. Even in a long work this should be done, this unifying knot should be tied in the writer's mind. Those readers who rise from the last pages of a long historical work, covering several volumes and hundreds or thousands of pages, with a clear central conception of the whole work are profoundly grateful to the author. It is safe to say that such a conception could not have been given to the reader had not the writer, before he wrote a word, formulated in a few words the goal, the aim of his writing. This sentence should include the emotional appeal either as stated in a separate clause or phrase, or as expressed in the choice of words to present the facts.

The amount of machinery that seems to be required for using the controlling purpose may appear too much for practical purposes in one short lifetime. The truth is that the actual finding of the purpose will require much less time, often, than the explanation of the process here has needed. In a short theme you will often be able to scan the subject itself, to estimate your own reaction to the subject, and to determine upon your reader with remarkable quickness. More frequently you will find difficulty in determining the emotional quality of the material and your desires. But a little practice will enable you to do the preliminary thinking with rapidity and comfort. But if your subject is difficult, and if the effect is of great importance, by no means allow yourself to be swerved from determination to find the real object which you are seeking, but even at the expense of time and trouble state the center of your intentions as related to the subject, yourself, and your reader.