Analyzing Syntactical Features of an Essay
Source: Portrait of E. M. Forster, Dora Carrington, Wikimedia Commons
The passage below, “Tolerance,” by E. M. Forster was first published in 1938 as the world headed into a second world war. It comes from a longer work entitled “Two Cheers for Democracy” or, as it is sometimes called, “What I Believe.” In the portion of the essay excerpted below, Forster offers his solution to world conflict in a friendly, earnest manner to persuade his audience to change their attitudes towards people they perceive as different from themselves.
As you read the essay, take note of Forster’s syntax and how it contributes to the meaning of his essay. We will focus on the features of syntax you have worked with in this lesson. (Every other sentence is underlined to help you distinguish one sentence from the next as you answer questions that follow the essay.)
Tolerance
By E. M. Forster
(Originally released July 1941 on the British Broadcasting System)
1) Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind. Architects, contractors, international commissioners, marketing boards, broadcasting corporations will never, by themselves, build a new world. They must be inspired by the proper spirit, and there must be the proper spirit in the people for whom they are working. . . .
2) What though is the proper spirit? . . . There must be a sound state of mind before diplomacy or economics or trade conferences can function. But what state of mind is sound? Here we may differ. Most people, when asked what spiritual quality is needed to rebuild civilization, will reply “Love.” Men must love one another, they say; nations must do likewise, and then the series of cataclysms which is threatening to destroy us will be checked.
3) Respectfully but firmly, I disagree. Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things: but love in public affairs does not work. It has been tried again and again: by the Christian civilizations of the Middle Ages, and also by the French Revolution, a secular movement which reasserted the brotherhood of man. And it has always failed. The idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or market boards should love one another, or that a man in Portugal should love a man in Peru of whom he has never heard—it is absurd, unreal, dangerous. It leads us into perilous and vague sentimentalism. “Love is what is needed,” we chant and then sit back, and the world goes on as before. The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something much less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely, tolerance. Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things. No one has ever written an ode to tolerance or raised a statue to her. Yet this is the quality which will be most needed after the war. This is the sound state of mind which we are looking for. This is the only force which will enable different races and classes and interests to settle down together to the work of reconstruction.
4) The world is very full of people—appallingly full; it has never been so full before, and they are all tumbling over each other. Most of these people one doesn’t know, and some of them one doesn’t like; doesn’t like the color of their skins, say, or the shapes of their noses, or the way they blow them or don’t blow them, or the way they talk, or their smell, or their clothes, or their fondness for jazz, or their dislike of jazz, and so on. Well, what is one to do? There are two solutions. One of them is the Nazi solution. If you don’t like people, kill them, banish them, segregate them, and then strut up and down proclaiming that you are the salt of the earth.The other way is much less thrilling, but it is on the whole the way of the democracies, and I prefer it. If you don’t like people, put up with them as well as you can. Don’t try to love them: you can’t; you’ll only strain yourself. But try to tolerate them. On the basis of that tolerance a civilized future may be built. Certainly I can see no other foundation for the postwar world.
5) For what it will most need is the negative virtues: not being huffy, touchy, irritable, revengeful. I have lost all faith in positive militant ideals; they can so seldom be carried out without thousands of human beings getting maimed or imprisoned. Phrases like “I will purge this nation,” “I will clean up this city,” terrify and disgust me. They might not have mattered when the world was emptier: they are horrifying now, when one nation is mixed up with another, when one city cannot be organically separated from its neighbors. . . .
6) I don’t then regard tolerance as a great eternally established divine principle, though I might perhaps quote “In my Father’s house are many mansions” in support of such a view. It is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out, and love generally gives out as soon as we move away from our home and our friends and stand among strangers in a queue for potatoes. Tolerance is wanted in the queue; otherwise we think, “Why will people be so slow?”; it is wanted in the tube, or “Why will people be so fat?”; it is wanted at the telephone, or “Why are they so deaf?” or conversely, “Why do they mumble?” It is wanted in the street, in the office, at the factory, and it is wanted above all between classes, races, and nations. It’s dull. And yet it entails imagination. For you have all the time to be putting yourself in someone else’s place. Which is a desirable spiritual exercise.
Analyze Foster’s Use of Subordination and Coordination: Click the link to open the graphic organizer. You can save, download, and print this file. When you are finished using the graphic organizer, return to the lesson.
Note: Forster uses so many other syntactical devices that deserve our attention, but there just isn’t enough time to address them all. Here’s a list of other devices to consider in the order they appear in the essay.
- Repetition of key words and phrases: “sound,” “proper spirit”
- Alliteration: The use of repeated sounds—“sound,” “state,” “spirit”; “Portugal,” “Peru”
- Asyndeton: creates unity, adds emphasis to the last word in the unit, speeds pace—“kill them, banish them, segregate them”
- Interrogative sentences: He asks and answers questions as a way to structure the essay.
- Inversion: Places emphasis on the words he puts first—“Love is what is needed, we chant . . .”
- Informal interrupters: Makes his style more down-to-earth—“namely,” “well”
- Appositives: Makes style more concise and meaning clearer—“a secular movement which reasserted the brotherhood of man”
- Repetition of words at the beginnings of sentences (also known as anaphora): Links sentences and adds powerful rhythm to the style and reinforces his points—“This is . . .,” “when one . . .,” “It is wanted . . .”
- Parallelism: Adds emphasis to the words and the rhythm; also serves as a transition—“The idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or marketing boards should love one another, or that a man in Portugal should love a man in Peru of whom he has never heard—it is absurd, unreal, dangerous.”
Please note that we have only scratched the surface of the element of syntax. If you want more information or want to be inspired, consider visiting the NPR website and listening to the interview with Dr. Stanley Fish on the station’s “Talk of the Nation” show. Dr. Fish has written a book called How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One. The 30-minute interview is well worth your time.
Source: “A Kindred Spirit,” Mark Parisi, Off the Mark.Com