Читать книгу Expository Writing - Mervin James Curl - Страница 18

If we could have our own sweet will in attacking the hill ten miles beyond the border, we should ask the enemy to stack his arms, and then, with trumpet and drum and flag we should sweep in and take possession. But our sweet will must give way to necessity. Since unscalable crags lie ahead, we shall have to go round to the rear of the hill. Since we must cross a swamp, engineers must precede and build a road. Though we should like to crawl up a wide valley on the other side, we must choose a smaller one, because the enemy could wither us away in the larger one. And, to trick the enemy, we shall perhaps open fire far off on the left, while we are stealing out to the right, and thus we may take him off his guard. Our purpose of securing that hill makes these things necessary.

Similarly, in writing, we may sometimes employ the order of greatest advantage, but more often we must modify this order to meet the requirements of the subject and to rouse the least resistance from the reader. In Stevenson's essay, "Pulvis et Umbra," part of which follows the essay by Mr. Burroughs, the author used the method of greatest advantage. His object is to thrill the reader at the thought that mankind constantly strives in spite of all his failures. Several orders are possible: he could treat of the striving alone, neglecting the failure; he could treat the striving first and then the failure, or vice versa, and so on. He saw that he would gain his purpose best if he treated failure first, until he had fairly overwhelmed the reader, and then suddenly shifted and showed that in spite of all this failure man still strives. He had to run the risk of offending the reader at the beginning by his insistence upon failure, and thus rousing the reader's possible great resistance. For we do not like to read unpleasant things. But he took the chance, knowing that if, by skillful use of words he could persuade the reader through the first part, he could easily thrill him with the reaction. For it makes a great difference whether we say, "In spite of striving, man always fails," or "In spite of failure, man always strives." The selection from the essay which appears here is taken from the middle. It is interesting to note that the first two sentences of the essay read: "We look for some reward of our endeavors and are disappointed; not success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun." And the words of the final sentence of the essay are: "Let it be enough for faith, that the whole creation groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy: surely not all in vain."

In the essay by Mr. Burroughs the author's advantage and the reader's acquiescence largely coincide, so that the author can at once begin with remarks about the attractiveness of the hunt, the delights of its successful conclusion. To discuss at once the possibility of being stung would have been unwise, because unpleasant, and the controlling purpose of the essay is to attract. Later, this topic can safely be tucked in.

Mr. Wilson's war messages showed a combination of the lines of greatest advantage and of least resistance with the nature of the historical events. These messages began with a series of facts which, obviously true, would rouse no resistance and would at the same time insert some resentment against Germany, the very thing that the author wished to do. Then they followed the strict chronological order, as if the author were pursuing a course already mapped for him—which, of course, he was not doing. With the controlling purpose of showing that America's entrance into the war was occasioned entirely by Germany's actions, he then proceeded to base the proposals of the messages upon the very facts that the readers had already accepted in accordance with his ultimate point of view. Such skillful manipulation deserved the success that the messages met.

All three of these examples gain their point, their objective. They do this largely because the authors knew exactly what they wished to do, what their controlling purposes were, and then marshaled their material so as to accomplish this end. Some of the topics that are subordinated, such, for example, as the possibility of being stung, are as important as others which are magnified, such as the beauty of nature—that is, they are as important in an impersonal way. As soon as the controlling purpose is known, however, they immediately become dangerous unless so placed as to bring the reader nearer the goal and not to push him from it. The point is that knowing the controlling purpose, that is, having thought out beforehand exactly what you wish to do with subject and reader, you are at once aware of both helps and obstacles, and can make use of the one, avoid the other.

Thus you will consider both the reader's ease and his prejudices. If you are to write of abstruse matters, of some question in philosophy or ethics or religion, in order to carry your reader with you you will begin with things that he can understand, and thus pave a highway into the misty lands where you desire to take him. Failure of some eminent philosophers to receive recognition has been due to their lack of a comprehensive controlling purpose, to their restricting attention to the subject alone regardless of the reader. In setting forth the principle of the machinery that digs tunnels under rivers Mr. Brooks in The Web-foot Engineer first shows how a boy digs a tunnel into a sand bank, and then proceeds, with the reader's understanding assured, to the more complex but still similar operation under the river. In explaining inductive reasoning, with the controlling purpose of making it seem both frequent and natural, Huxley showed first how we reason practically about the nature of apples in a basket at the grocer's. The reader's resistance is thus avoided and the writer's advantage is increased.

A shrewd controlling purpose also makes allowance for the reader's prejudices. You ought to take as much care to cajole your reader into following you as the cook does to make us happy to the final morsel. After ices and cakes and coffee a roast or a soup is positively offensive; the cook wisely wins the battle of the spit and the dripping pan while the epicure is still receptive. So, if you are to explain democracy in a state where the recall of judges is practiced to an aristocrat who distrusts the "common herd" and is easily ruffled, you will do well to preface discussion of this recall with words about the general excellence of life in the state and then, when your reader is in a mood of acceptance, pass to the possibly offensive topic. Without knowing just what you wish to accomplish, you are likely to write in what may seem a dogged, defiant mood that intends to strike right and left, hoping to wallow through to victory.

If between us and the enemy's fort is a stream which needs pontoons for crossing, and we blindly start out marching up toward victory with no pontoons, we shall perhaps sail away to sea, but shall also probably not win the fort. If we insist upon keeping our platoon as rigidly straight, even while we climb hills through the woods, as ever a line was kept at West Point, we shall come to grief. So, if the logic of the subject has imperious demands, the controlling purpose must make count of them. William James in his essay, "The Moral Equivalent of War," saw that before a reader could understand how civic work could be a moral equivalent, he must see what the morality of war is. The subject demands this. In an account of the United States Government it might be logically necessary to state and explain first the theory of checks and balances before the relations of executive, legislative, and judicial branches could be properly estimated. Wisely chosen, the controlling purpose of such an account would make this fact at once evident.

Constantly keeping in mind, in planning and composing an article, what the objective is, makes even the individual paragraphs and sentences more successful. If you will examine the paragraphs in "Pulvis et Umbra," you will observe, pretty uniformly, at the beginning and end of each, a strong statement of the message of the paragraph, sentences of high emotional value. Each paragraph definitely advances the cause of the controlling purpose. Even the sentences—an example of a sentence uncontrolled occurs in Mr. Hamlin Garland's book, A Son of the Middle Border: "It stood on the bank of a wide river and had all the value of a seaport to me, for in summer-time great hoarsely bellowing steam-boats came and went from its quay, and all about it rose high wooded hills." The final item about the hills is in no way necessary, does not even help to give the feeling of a seaport, which more often than not lacks high hills. A sentence from Stevenson is in contrast: "The sun upon my shoulders warmed me to the heart, and I stooped forward and plunged into the sea." In this sentence facts, rhythm, even the sound of the words drive in one direction.

Without being too dogmatic—for every problem in writing is new and not infrequently a law to itself—you may be sure that if you have a definite controlling purpose, and know well what it is, you will be more likely to attain success with subject and with reader when you come to the ordering of your material.

Finally, since strategy suggests that we attack the weakest places in the enemy's defense, we shall do well, unless the logic of the subject or the reader's prejudice demand otherwise, to make our strongest blows when the enemy, the reader, is least prepared, that is, at the beginning and the end. Success in writing depends so much upon the freshness of the reader's mind, that an attaque brusque at first to insert important things, and a strong reinforcement at the end, when the reader is pricking up his ears at the coming final period, form a wise strategy. If, in order to understand one point, another is necessary, or to avoid irritation, a roundabout method is advisable, the path is plain. When these accidents do not obtain, the reader's understanding will be most easily won at the beginning and the end. At these points you must see to it that the reader is guided, with the first word, toward the emotional tone that your controlling purpose demands, and toward some important idea that bolsters this purpose, even if, as we have seen Stevenson do, you seem to be at first flying away from the purpose which we later discover. Thus Mr. Taft, in an article entitled "Present Relations of the Learned Professions to Political Government," places the ministry at the beginning and the law at the end. His controlling purpose is to make the reader believe that every profession offers large chance for the conscientious man to be of use to the political government. Consequently he chooses the two that he thinks most important, and of these places the less important at the beginning and the more important at the end. In this way he succeeds at once in turning the reader as he wishes, and leaves him also with the strongest possible bias toward belief. And since these two professions offer the greatest chance for victory for his controlling purpose, he gives them much more space than to the others, almost three times as much to law, for instance, as to teaching.

Moreover, since the emotions are affected in much writing, the skilled strategist will instantly bear in mind just what emotion he wishes to rouse, and will see that the ideas of greater moving value receive larger development. Mr. Burroughs gives much more space to the sections that deal with the excitement and the joy of bee-hunting than to those that deal with the less pleasant side. To the difficulty of detecting the flight of a bee he gives the single sentence: "Sometimes one's head will swim following it, and often one's eyes are put out by the sun." To the interesting actions of the bee when it is caught he gives at least ten times as much space. In this way he guides the reader's emotions in the way he wishes them to go—and makes successful writing.

The chief strategic problem in exposition, then, is that of so choosing and arranging the material that the point of the writing is made with the proper emphasis. For the accomplishment of this purpose the writer must be able to answer the question, "What do I wish to do in this piece of writing?" Then he must bring all the material and its expression to bear upon the reader's mind so that the desired end may be inevitable. To determine what his purpose is the writer must consult the subject itself, his own personality, and the reader. He must also bear in mind the reader's intellect and his emotions. And he must unify the approach to both intellect and emotions. The firmly held conception of what his purpose is will determine what material he is to choose—what is useful and what is not—and also how to arrange this material and how to proportion the space that different sections shall have. He will arrange the material for the greatest advantage to himself and the least resistance from the reader. In other words, to make his writing successful in the sense of accomplishing its end, the writer must, before he sets down a single word, decide upon what his controlling purpose is to be and just how he intends to make material and expression—even in the individual sentence—unite to drive in the one direction of that controlling purpose.