CHAPTER VI.

THE WHOLE COMPOSITION.

EYOND the grouping of sentences together to form

BEYOND

paragraphs there is the larger grouping of paragraphs to build up the whole composition. This is governed by exactly the same principles of unity and organism that we have already traced; only the broadening of their application, and the requirements of different kinds of subjectmatter make it necessary to pass them in review again.

We will suppose, then, that we have in hand a line of thought or a series of facts that we wish to convey. As first presented to our mind it will be vague; our chief business therefore is to clear it up by thinking what it means as a whole, and what are the parts that contribute to the whole; that is, we must make our plan. But inhering with the question of plan is the question of effect and of subject-matter: what kind of plan and organism we can make in order best to set forth the material we have to work with; this makes important the different processes of composition. The following, then, are the two main divisions into which the present chapter falls:

1. Requisites of Composition.

2. Processes of Composition.

In this final chapter we have reached the point where every detail of composition has to be kept constantly ready for use. Plan, theme, and process, as we shall see, underlie and determine the whole; but woven throughout the whole, inseparable from any part, are choice of words,

What is

phraseology, sentence structure, and the rest. first to be learned is most constantly to be applied.

I. REQUISITES OF COMPOSITION.

It is strongly advisable, perhaps we may better say necessary, to draw up a careful plan of what you are going to write. Put it in tabular form, expressing each thought as concisely and accurately as you can, determining the divisions and subdivisions by different styles of numbering. It is very hard to make a coherent and selfconsistent line of thought without planning it in this way. Even if a writer gets by experience the ability to make and follow a plan mentally, he must ordinarily have acquired that ability by planning much on paper.

I.

Rules for determining Whole and Parts.-The following are the rules to be mentally observed as underlying in some form the composition of any and every kind of discourse. How they are to be modified in the individual case is a problem that no one but the writer himself can solve.

100. Make your

one theme.

As the sentence builds up the excomposition centre in pression of one idea, and as the paragraph constitutes the development of one topic, so the whole composition, however long or complicated, is concerned with a single theme. The word theme is the Greek word éμa, something placed, or laid down, and may be defined as the working-idea of the dis

course.

This theme is laid down first of all for the writer himself to work to; and whether expressed in the completed

work or not is necessary to steady the writer's thought and keep out what is irrelevant. In the finished product it may either be expressed, as in an essay or argument, or diffused, as in a description or narrative; but in any case when we come to recall the whole its effect should be reducible to a single idea or purpose governing the composition of every part.

It is in the choosing of and working to a theme, therefore, that we secure that main determining quality of all good composition, unity.

As the theme may take different forms, so it may have different objects; indeed the object has much to do in determining the form.

1. It may be a theme to know or remember, as when the writer is seeking to impart a fact or principle or truth; this kind of theme is generally best expressed in the form of a proposition to be proved.

ILLUSTRATIONS. If, for instance, you are thinking of any subject, your first step will be to put in a sentence what you believe of that subject; this is determining the theme. Let the subject be Honesty ; then your theme may be some such assertion as, "Honesty is the best policy," or, "Honesty is the basis of all business dealings," for one subject may suggest many themes. Let it be Daniel Webster; then you will think out some truth about him, as for instance, "Daniel Webster was the champion of the Constitution," and all your work will be directed to showing how this is true.

2. It may be a theme to feel or realize, as when the writer is seeking to impress the beauty of a scene, or to make his reader enter into the grandeur or pathos or fun of an event. This kind of theme is more naturally thought of as a title or heading, and instead of being expressed somewhere in the composition is generally diffused as an influence through the whole.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

·Take any short story, for instance, and after reading it ask yourself what effect, what main impression, it has produced on you; this impression, which will be so definite as to give that story a character of its own, is virtually its theme. The theme of "Rab and his Friends," for example, might be called, “A Faithful Companion of a Humble Couple"; of "Rip Van Winkle," "Legend of a Twenty Years' Sleep."

3. It may be a theme to act upon or do, as when an orator is seeking to convince people of the importance of some prescribed duty or conduct. In this case it is a kind of command or imperative, in which the power of the whole discourse is concentrated.

ILLUSTRATIONS. It is mainly in the fact that its general effect is reducible to an imperative that the oration is distinguished from the essay. Webster's Reply to Hayne, for example, embodies some such imperative as this: "Maintain the Integrity of the Union above the Dictates of individual States." Curtis's oration on "The Public Duty of Educated Men "1 centres in the imperative, "Be true to Country above Party.”

IOI. In the divisions of your plan, work for distinctness, sequence, climax.

The ideal of a course of thought is that it should be like a kind of story, advancing continuously, without giving the reader any sense of break or dislocation from beginning to end. In order rightly to accomplish this,

First, the main thoughts of which the plan is composed should be distinct from one another, not mixed together and confused; that is, the plan must have a skeleton, indicating where are the thoughts that belong together and where are the thoughts that are separate.

Secondly, the writer should work for sequence, that is, study to make every new thought grow naturally out of 1 Printed in Genung's Handbook of Rhetorical Analysis, p. 275.

the preceding, or be naturally suggested from it. Thus alone does the plan move continuously to its end.

Thirdly, the writer should work for climax, that is, study to make the successive thoughts increase in interest and strength as he goes along. Rule 54 gives the principle of climax for the clause or sentence; here it is to be noted that the same principle applies equally to all the steps of the plan.

ILLUSTRATION. Washington Irving's little essay on Christmas; which will be found, with its plan, in Appendix ii. page 294, will here be used to exemplify this and succeeding rules of planning.

The essay reads continuously from beginning to end. Yet it will be noticed that the several thoughts are distinct, for the writer first speaks in several paragraphs of Christmas in general, then of the English Christmas, and finally of its influence on his imagination and sympathies. They have also a natural sequence, for the writer begins with the more general considerations and advances to the more particular; in the subdivisions, too, he begins with the religious observance, signifying love to God, and comes to the family observance, signifying love to each other; then from the influence of the season without he advances to the cheer of the hearth and hospitality within; thus a naturally suggested continuity can be traced throughout. Finally, the thoughts rise in interest, that is, have climax; for the particular observances are more vivid than general considerations, the cheer within more comfortable than the keen weather without, yet the cold without is more potent in moral influence than the gay and dissipating summer that it succeeds.

102. Make corresponding divisions

In the planning of any composition there are pretty sure to be both similar in statement. main divisions and subdivisions of the thought; the main divisions planned with reference to the whole theme, the subdivisions taking up in turn and particularizing the main divisions. In compositions of any considerable length division is frequently carried to