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.With duesolemnity the blessed sacrament was elevated, and at the very mo-ment that this good heretical Catholic and Catholic heretic (un-mindful for once of his nine learned virgins) was raising his armsin seemly devotion toward the sacred which in itsmight, or might not, contain a subtle and crafty secret, hefell back dead. 64 THE ESSAYHere the effectiveness of closing with the death scene isreinforced by the careful construction of the last sentence,which does not complete its main thought until the very finalword."Dead" falls into place like the last piece of a puzzle.Natural closings are not restricted to deathbed descriptions.Writing about your daily routine, for instance, you might wellend with some variation of the phrase the diarist SamuelPepys made famous: "And so to Even when a subjectdoes not have a built-in closing, a comparison or figure ofspeech can provide one.These, then, are some of the ways of making clear that youare through.The various techniques do not exclude one an-other; they are often combined.Nor are these the only devicesof closing.Inventive writers tailor their endings to subject andpurpose.The poet Dylan Thomas wittily concludes his essay"How To Begin a Story" by doing what inexperienced writ-ers should not stopping in mid-sentence:see there is little, or no, time to continue my instructional essayon "How To Begin a Story." "How To End a Story" is, of course,a different matter.One way of ending a story is.And Virginia closes an essay called "Reading" withthis sentence:Some offering we must make; some act we must dedicate, if onlyto move across the room and turn the rose in the jar, which, by theway, has dropped its petals.It is difficult to say why this works.The rhythm is important.But so is the image.The flower that has dropped its petals isperhaps a metaphor of ending.And the seeming irrelevancyof the final clause also signals finality, like the gracious closingof a conversation.In any case, the passage ends the essayneatly and unmistakably.That is the important thing. CLOSING 65Summation and ConclusionTermination is always a function of the closing paragraph orsentence.Sometimes, depending on subject and purpose, youmay need to make a summary or to draw a conclusion, in thesense of a final inference or judgment.Summaries are more likely in long, complicated papers.Usually they are signaled by a phrase like in summary, to sumup, summing up, in short, in fine, to recapitulate.The labelmay be more subtle: "We have seen, and sub-tlety is usually a virtue in such matters.Logical conclusions or judgments may be necessary evenin short essays.Certain subjects make them obligatory.Herethe journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams concludes an article onthe controversial Warren Harding (the twenty-ninth presi-dent, who served from 1921 to 1923):The anomaly of Warren Gamaliel Harding's career is that withoutwanting, knowing, or trying to do anything at unusual, he be-came the figurehead for the most flagrantly corrupt regime in ourhistory.It was less his fault than that of the country at large.Ma-neuvered by the politicians, the American people selected to rep-resent them one whom they considered an average man.But thejob they assigned him is not an average job.When he provedcapable of meeting its requirements, they blamed him and notthemselves.That is the tragedy of Harding.On occasion it may not be the best strategy, or even bepossible, to round off an essay with a neat final judgment.The novelist Joseph Conrad once remarked that the businessof the storyteller is to ask questions, not to answer them.Thattruth applies sometimes to the essayist, who may wish to sug-gest a judgment rather than to formulate one.The strategy iscalled an implicative closing.The writer stops short, allowingthe reader to infer the conclusion.In effect the final sentences 66 THE ESSAYopen a door instead of closing one.Here, for instance, is theending of an essay about a teenage hangout:The old lady who lives across the street from the place says thatthe most striking thing is the momentary silences which, now andagain, break up the loud, loud laughter. CHAPTER10Organizing the MiddleJust as an essay must begin and end well, so it must be clearlyorganized in between.An important part of a writer's job isassisting readers in following the organization.It can be donein two ways, which are often used together.One is byphrases, sentences (occasionally even a shortparagraph) which tells readers what you have done, are doing,will do next, or even will not do at all.The other way is byinterparagraph transitions, that is, words and phrases that tiethe beginning of a new paragraph to what precedes it.SignpostsThe most common signpost is an initial sentence that indicatesboth the topic and the general plan of treating it.For instance,the scientist J.B.S.Haldane organizes a five-paragraph sec-tion of a long essay like this:Science impinges upon ethics in at least five different ways.In thefirst place.Thirdly.Fourthly.Fifthly. 68 THE ESSAYSequence may be signaled by actual numbers orusually enclosed in than by words likefirst, second, in the first place, and so on.The poet B.Yeatsexplains why he believes in magic:believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreedto call magic, in what must call the evocation of spirits, thoughdo not know what they are, in the power of creating magical illu-sions, in the visions of truth in the depths of the mind when theeyes are closed; and believe in three doctrines, which have, asthink, been handed down from early times, and been the founda-tion of nearly all magical practices.These doctrinesThat the borders of our mind are ever shifting, and that manyminds can flow into one another, and create or reveal a single mind,a single energy.2.That the borders of our memories are as shifting, and that ourmemories are a part of one great memory, the memory of Natureherself.3.That this great mind and great memory can be evoked bysymbols [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.With duesolemnity the blessed sacrament was elevated, and at the very mo-ment that this good heretical Catholic and Catholic heretic (un-mindful for once of his nine learned virgins) was raising his armsin seemly devotion toward the sacred which in itsmight, or might not, contain a subtle and crafty secret, hefell back dead. 64 THE ESSAYHere the effectiveness of closing with the death scene isreinforced by the careful construction of the last sentence,which does not complete its main thought until the very finalword."Dead" falls into place like the last piece of a puzzle.Natural closings are not restricted to deathbed descriptions.Writing about your daily routine, for instance, you might wellend with some variation of the phrase the diarist SamuelPepys made famous: "And so to Even when a subjectdoes not have a built-in closing, a comparison or figure ofspeech can provide one.These, then, are some of the ways of making clear that youare through.The various techniques do not exclude one an-other; they are often combined.Nor are these the only devicesof closing.Inventive writers tailor their endings to subject andpurpose.The poet Dylan Thomas wittily concludes his essay"How To Begin a Story" by doing what inexperienced writ-ers should not stopping in mid-sentence:see there is little, or no, time to continue my instructional essayon "How To Begin a Story." "How To End a Story" is, of course,a different matter.One way of ending a story is.And Virginia closes an essay called "Reading" withthis sentence:Some offering we must make; some act we must dedicate, if onlyto move across the room and turn the rose in the jar, which, by theway, has dropped its petals.It is difficult to say why this works.The rhythm is important.But so is the image.The flower that has dropped its petals isperhaps a metaphor of ending.And the seeming irrelevancyof the final clause also signals finality, like the gracious closingof a conversation.In any case, the passage ends the essayneatly and unmistakably.That is the important thing. CLOSING 65Summation and ConclusionTermination is always a function of the closing paragraph orsentence.Sometimes, depending on subject and purpose, youmay need to make a summary or to draw a conclusion, in thesense of a final inference or judgment.Summaries are more likely in long, complicated papers.Usually they are signaled by a phrase like in summary, to sumup, summing up, in short, in fine, to recapitulate.The labelmay be more subtle: "We have seen, and sub-tlety is usually a virtue in such matters.Logical conclusions or judgments may be necessary evenin short essays.Certain subjects make them obligatory.Herethe journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams concludes an article onthe controversial Warren Harding (the twenty-ninth presi-dent, who served from 1921 to 1923):The anomaly of Warren Gamaliel Harding's career is that withoutwanting, knowing, or trying to do anything at unusual, he be-came the figurehead for the most flagrantly corrupt regime in ourhistory.It was less his fault than that of the country at large.Ma-neuvered by the politicians, the American people selected to rep-resent them one whom they considered an average man.But thejob they assigned him is not an average job.When he provedcapable of meeting its requirements, they blamed him and notthemselves.That is the tragedy of Harding.On occasion it may not be the best strategy, or even bepossible, to round off an essay with a neat final judgment.The novelist Joseph Conrad once remarked that the businessof the storyteller is to ask questions, not to answer them.Thattruth applies sometimes to the essayist, who may wish to sug-gest a judgment rather than to formulate one.The strategy iscalled an implicative closing.The writer stops short, allowingthe reader to infer the conclusion.In effect the final sentences 66 THE ESSAYopen a door instead of closing one.Here, for instance, is theending of an essay about a teenage hangout:The old lady who lives across the street from the place says thatthe most striking thing is the momentary silences which, now andagain, break up the loud, loud laughter. CHAPTER10Organizing the MiddleJust as an essay must begin and end well, so it must be clearlyorganized in between.An important part of a writer's job isassisting readers in following the organization.It can be donein two ways, which are often used together.One is byphrases, sentences (occasionally even a shortparagraph) which tells readers what you have done, are doing,will do next, or even will not do at all.The other way is byinterparagraph transitions, that is, words and phrases that tiethe beginning of a new paragraph to what precedes it.SignpostsThe most common signpost is an initial sentence that indicatesboth the topic and the general plan of treating it.For instance,the scientist J.B.S.Haldane organizes a five-paragraph sec-tion of a long essay like this:Science impinges upon ethics in at least five different ways.In thefirst place.Thirdly.Fourthly.Fifthly. 68 THE ESSAYSequence may be signaled by actual numbers orusually enclosed in than by words likefirst, second, in the first place, and so on.The poet B.Yeatsexplains why he believes in magic:believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreedto call magic, in what must call the evocation of spirits, thoughdo not know what they are, in the power of creating magical illu-sions, in the visions of truth in the depths of the mind when theeyes are closed; and believe in three doctrines, which have, asthink, been handed down from early times, and been the founda-tion of nearly all magical practices.These doctrinesThat the borders of our mind are ever shifting, and that manyminds can flow into one another, and create or reveal a single mind,a single energy.2.That the borders of our memories are as shifting, and that ourmemories are a part of one great memory, the memory of Natureherself.3.That this great mind and great memory can be evoked bysymbols [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]