Expository Writing

by Mervin James Curl

The Controlling Purpose and the Emotional Reaction

So far we have been concerned with the problem of placing the facts before the reader, of appealing to his intelligence. But writing consists of vastly more than that alone. After the understanding, sometimes before, must be considered the emotions. We have the facts, we know what we think of them, and we are reasonably sure of the reader's attitude. Now we must discover how to set the reader's emotions afire in so far as we desire such an effect. In listening to a great tragedy we perceive the cold analysis of a great truth of life; but that is not all: far out beyond the bounds of understanding our emotions are profoundly stirred and we feel pity and terror. So in the account of a tremendous battle, of a fire, of anything that touches human life at all nearly and with power, our emotions are called into play. Now different pieces of writing, just like different subjects, call for different degrees of emotional reaction. Drama always rouses us, lyric poems depend upon their emotional quality, the informal essay has much emotional appeal, fiction of any sort stirs our feelings, and the more powerful the writing is, the more sure the appeal.

At first thought most expository writing might be considered to make slight appeal, if any, to emotions. That is not necessarily true; the more effective the exposition, the more real is usually the call to feeling. Often this call is subtle, usually it is subordinate to the appeal to the understanding, but in most effective expository writing it will be found. In an explanation of the Panama Canal certainly there would be roused the reader's admiration and wonder at the magnitude of the operation. The mere analysis of the facts in a criminal trial often settles the case, so great is the emotional appeal. In didactic writing the call to emotion is less strong, though such a writer as Jonathan Edwards could explain the writhing of man like a spider before the Almighty in a profoundly moving way. In axiomatic mathematical propositions we find perhaps the least strong appeal: that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles might seem to be divorced from all excitement. But in most exposition when emotional appeal is overlooked the writing suffers.

In an account of the American Civil War, for example, the writer might set out to show that the conflict was the culmination of the struggle between yeoman and cavalier begun long since in England. But the war meant more than that. The author will then see the emotional significance of the fight and will add to his purpose the intention to thrill the reader at the magnificent exhibition, on both sides, of devotion to an idea. So Emerson, in his essay on "Fate" in The Conduct of Life, fills the reader with gloom for page after page, detailing how thoroughly the individual is bound down by conditions of birth, sex, breeding, wealth—and then in two wonderful sentences he turns the whole course of thought and emotion by saying, "Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free," and the reader is stirred as with a trumpet call to renewed courage, which, to use Emerson's words, "neither brandy, nor nectar, nor sulphuric ether, nor hell-fire, nor ichor, nor poetry, nor genius" can overcome. And the historian Greene, in his well-known account of Queen Elizabeth, states his controlling purpose in the words, "Elizabeth was at once the daughter of Henry and of Anne Boleyn." But these words are not the whole of his purpose; he intends, besides the intellectual grasping of the Queen's character, an intense admiration and wonder at the resourcefulness, the shrewd judgment, and a reaction of amusement to the strange outbreaks of unwomanly freaks or of feminine wiles.

The controlling purpose, then, is almost always of a dual nature; it aims at both the understanding and the emotions. Whenever there is any real possibility of making it thus double the writer should so express it to himself.

In the following magazine article such a double purpose obviously exists. First of all there are the facts of the marching of American troops through London. These facts are unchangeable. Baldly stated, the significance of the fact is that the New World is coming to the help of the Old World against the monster of unrestrained militarism. To a person who regards life coldly, as the mere interplay of calculable forces, one whose emotions are not concerned, this would be a sufficient statement of the whole truth, of the total significance. But such writing would miss the chance of power, would be forever less valuable than it ought to be, for a great warming of the heart answers those footfalls in London streets. In other words, just as we have seen that there are two kinds of exposition—mere noting of facts and interpreting of facts—so we now see that interpretation can be either lifeless, or moving, charged with power. It is the old difference between the drama and a sermon: the play thrills and the sermon convinces. Either may add the other quality—a fine drama or a well-made sermon does. In this account of American soldiers in London the truth is made clear, but far more than that it is made alive, pulsating with emotion of national pride, of racial solidarity, of high moral purpose. In so far as the writer succeeds in stirring us, in just so far he is more likely to make the truth take hold upon us and bind us firmly in its grasp. It is the writing that both convinces and moves us that is lasting, that is really powerful.

"SOLEMN-LOOKING BLOKES"[5]

At midday on August 15 I stood on the pavement in Cockspur Street and watched the first contingent of American troops pass through London.

I had been attracted thither by the lure of a public "show," by the blare of a band, and by a subconscious desire to pay tribute in my small way to a great people. It was a good day for London, intermittently bright, with great scurrying masses of cumuli overhead, and a characteristic threat of rain, which fortunately held off. Cockspur Street, as you know, is a turning off Trafalgar Square, and I chose it because the crowd was less dense there than in the square itself. By getting behind a group of shortish people and by standing on tiptoe I caught a fleeting view of the faces of nearly every one of the passing soldiers.

London is schooled to shows of this kind. The people gather and wait patiently on the line of route. And then some genial policemen appear and mother the people back into some sort of line, an action performed with little fuss or trouble. Then mounted police appear, headed by some fat official in a cockade hat and with many ribbons on his chest. And some one in the crowd calls out:

"Hullo, Percy! Mind you don't fall off yer 'orse!"

Then the hearers laugh and begin to be on good terms with themselves, for they know that the "show" is coming. Then follows the inevitable band, and we begin to cheer.

It is very easy and natural for a London crowd to cheer. I have heard Kaiser William II cheered in the streets of London! We always cheer our guests, and we love a band and a "show" almost as much as our republican friends across the channel. I have seen royal funerals and weddings, processions in honor of visiting presidents and kings, the return of victorious generals, processions of Canadian, Australian, Indian, French and Italian troops and bands. I wouldn't miss these things for worlds. They give color to our social life and accent to our everyday emotions. It is, moreover, peculiarly interesting to observe national traits on a march: the French, with their exuberant élan, throwing kisses to the women as they pass; our own Tommies, who have surprised the world with their gayety, and keep up a constant ragging intercourse with the crowd and cannot cease from singing; the Indians, who pass like a splendidly carved frieze; the Canadians, who move with a free and independent swing and grin in a friendly way; the Scotch, who carry it off better than any one. But I had never seen American troops, and I was anxious to see how they behaved. I said to myself, "The American is volatile and impressionable, like a child." I had met Americans who within an hour's acquaintance had told me their life-story, given me their views on religion, politics, and art, and invited me to go out to Iowa or Wisconsin or California, and spend the summer with them. Moreover, the American is above all things emotional and—may I say it?—sentimental. It would therefore be extremely interesting to see how he came through this ordeal.

The first band passed, and the people were waving flags and handkerchiefs from the windows. We could hear the cheers go up from the great throng in the square. And there at last, sure enough, was Old Glory, with its silken tassels floating in the London breeze, carried by a solemn giant, with another on either side.

And then they came, marching in fours, with their rifles at the slope, the vanguard of Uncle Sam's army. And we in Cockspur Street raised a mighty cheer. They were solemn, bronzed men, loose of limb, hard, and strong, with a curious set expression of purpose about them.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.

And they looked neither to the right nor the left; nor did they look up or smile or apparently take any notice of the cheers we raised. We strained forward to see their faces, and we cried out to them our welcome.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.

They were not all tall; some were short and wiry. Some of the officers were rather elderly and wore horn spectacles. But they did not look at us or raise a smile of response. They held themselves very erect, but their eyes were cast down or fixed upon the back of the man in front of them. There came an interval, and another band, and then Old Glory once more, and we cheered the flag even more than the men. Fully a thousand men passed in this solemn procession, not one of them smiling or looking up. It became almost disconcerting. It was a thing we were not used to. A fellow-cockney near me murmured:

"They're solemn-looking blokes, ain't they?"

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.

The band blared forth once more, a drum-and-fife corps with a vibrant thrill behind it. We strained forward more eagerly to see the faces of our friends from the New World. We loved it best when the sound of the band had died away and the only music was the steady throb of those friendly boots upon our London streets. And still they did not smile. I had a brief moment of some vague apprehension, as though something could not be quite right. Some such wave, I think, was passing through the crowd. What did it mean?

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.

The cheers died away for a few moments in an exhausted diminuendo. Among those people, racked by three years of strain and suffering, there probably was not one who had not lost some one dear to them. Even the best nerves have their limit of endurance. Suddenly the ready voice of a woman from the pavement called out:

"God bless you, Sammy!"

And then we cheered again in a different key, and I noticed a boy in the ranks throw back his head and look up. On his face was the expression we see only on the faces of those who know the finer sensibilities—a fierce, exultant joy that is very near akin to tears. And gradually I became aware that on the faces of these grim men was written an emotion almost too deep for expression.

As they passed it was easy to detect their ethnological heritage. There was the Anglo-Saxon type, perhaps predominant; the Celt; the Slav; the Latin; and in many cases definitely the Teuton: and yet there was not one of them that had not something else, who was not preëminently a good "United States man." It was as though upon the anvil of the New World all the troubles of the Old, after being passed through a white-hot furnace, had been forged into something clear and splendid. And they were hurrying on to get this accomplished. For once and all the matter must be settled.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.

There was a slight congestion, and the body of men near me halted and marked time. A diminutive officer with a pointed beard was walking alone. A woman in the crowd leaned forward and waved an American flag in his face. He saluted, made some kindly remark, and then passed on.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.

The world must be made safe for democracy.

And I thought inevitably of the story of the Titan myth, of Prometheus, the first real democrat, who held out against the gods because they despised humanity. And they nailed him to a rock, and cut off his eyelids, and a vulture fed upon his entrails.

But Prometheus held on, his line of reasoning being:

"After Uranus came Cronus. After Cronus came Zeus. After Zeus will come other gods."

It is the finest epic in human life, and all the great teachers and reformers who came after told the same story—Christ, Vishnu, Confucius, Mohammed, Luther, Shakespeare. The fundamental basis of their teaching was love and faith in humanity. And whenever humanity is threatened, the fires which Prometheus stole from the gods will burn more brightly in the heart of man, and they will come from all quarters of the world.

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible, swift sword.

There is no quarter, no mercy, to the enemies of humanity. There is no longer a war; it is a crusade. And as I stood on the flags of Cockspur Street, I think I understood the silence of those grim men. They seemed to epitomize not merely a nation, not merely a flag, but the unbreakable sanctity of human rights and human life. And I knew that whatever might happen, whatever the powers of darkness might devise, whatever cunning schemes or diabolical plans, or whatever temporary successes they might attain, they would ultimately go down into the dust before "the fateful lightning." "After Zeus will come other gods."

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.

Nothing could live and endure against that steady and irresistible progression. And we know how you can do things, America. We have seen your workshops, your factories, and your engines of peace. And we have seen those young men of yours at the Olympic Games, with their loose, supple limbs, their square, strong faces. When the Spartans, lightly clad, but girt for war, ran across the hills to Athens and, finding the Persian hosts defeated, laughed, and congratulated the Athenians, and ran back again—since those days there never were such runners, such athletes, as these boys of yours from Yale and Harvard, Princeton and Cornell.

And so on that day, if we cheered the flag more than we cheered the men, it was because the flag was the symbol of the men's hearts, which were too charged with the fires of Prometheus to trust themselves expression.

At least that is how it appeared to me on that forenoon in Cockspur Street, and I know that later in the day, when I met a casual friend, and he addressed me with the usual formula of the day:

"Any news?"

I was able to say:

"Yes, the best news in the world."

And when he replied:

"What news?"

I could say with all sincerity:

"I have seen a portent. The world is safe for democracy."