Ex Post Facto

You do get a few hits for this phrase if you Google it, but I recognize that it probably needs to be defined.

Syntax refers to a language’s rules about how words fit together in a sentence. Many of these rules go unstated most of the time.

If I were to rephrase the previous sentence as follows, you would know that I wasn’t following the rules of English syntax:

Go unstated most of the time many of the rules.

Few native speakers of English would say such a thing. (Yoda’s native tongue was not English.) But native speakers do sometimes write sentences whose syntax suffers from indeterminacy: it starts out heading in one direction but then takes an unexpected — and ungrammatical — turn, leaving readers scratching their heads and forcing them to start over.

When I encounter such a sentence, I find myself mentally repunctuating it as I read it for the second or third time. Read this sentence carefully:

Abraham Lincoln was in his forties as a national crisis erupted over slavery, going back into politics for this reason, Lincoln ran for the senate and the presidency.

Did you notice any problems? This sentence is a form of run-on known as a comma splice. Furthermore, it suffers from syntactical indeterminacy. If you were indeed reading every word, you probably assumed that the phrase “going back” was going to refer to the crisis over slavery. Instead, the (imaginary) writer started over with a new independent clause that had no syntactical connection to the previous independent clause. The comma should have been either a period or a semicolon (which indicates a full stop in most situations).

If you were skimming over the words (barely reading), you might not even notice such an error, but if you were reading carefully, you probably had to stop in your tracks, go back, and reread. As far as I can tell, the human brain can only track one syntax at a time, so it doesn’t do so well when the syntax suddenly shifts. Creative writers, of course, sometimes play syntactical tricks on their readers, but if you are writing to argue or describe or explain, you probably don’t want to throw up roadblocks to reader comprehension.

To avoid syntactical indeterminacy when you are integrating quotations into your own sentences, and thus into your own syntax, you need to make sure that the syntax of your sentence matches up with that of the quotation. Just because you are quoting does not mean that the rules of syntax no longer apply!

Usually, if you are quoting part of a sentence, you can find a way to work it naturally into your own sentence, with no special punctuation. For instance:

The 1848 Seneca Falls “Declaration of Sentiments” echoed the Declaration of Independence, stating that “all men and women are created equal.”

If you are quoting more than one independent clause, however, you need to set the quotation off with a colon, thus separating the syntax of your sentence from that of the quotation. If you don’t use a colon in such a situation, you create a run-on. In other words, if a quotation starts inside your own syntax, it must end there, too. Here’s an example of an error:

In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln noted the surprising length and severity of the Civil War, “Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.”

Above, Lincoln’s sentences are simply spliced onto the previous sentence, creating a comma splice. Notice how the next example runs on:

Much like the Declaration of Independence, the 1848 Seneca Falls “Declaration” included a long list of grievances, such as “He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice. He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men–both natives and foreigners.”

This kind of error, unfortunately, does appear in copyedited, published writing. The problem here is that, technically speaking, the three independent clauses of the quotation have been inserted into the syntax of the original sentence, which creates a series of run-on sentences. Again, just because you are quoting does not mean that the rules of syntax no longer apply. All that this passage needs is a colon to set off the quotation. The rule-abiding reader will know that the colon constitutes a syntactical break.

We know from folk wisdom and fables that appearances can be deceiving. Wolves sometimes wear sheep’s clothing, and good books sometimes have bad covers. Nevertheless, when it comes to your writing, appearance as well as content will shape your readers’ opinions of your work. The conventions of spelling and grammar may be mere conventions, but they are conventions that facilitate communication. Readers will notice if you fail to observe the rules. Sometimes a misspelled word or misused punctuation mark will alert your readers that you did not take the time to proofread. More seriously, an error may leave readers unsure of what you meant: content and style are not easily separated.

Therefore, if you are taking a Writing Emphasis course, I will hold you accountable for the following five rules when grading your formal essays. I will deduct 0.5% from your grade for each violation of the rules below, up to a maximum of 8% per assignment. Make sure that you understand these rules!

Each rule includes an UPPER-CASE abbreviation that I will use to indicate your errors when giving you feedback.

For additional help, see Mary Rampolla’s Pocket Guide to Writing in History and Diana Hacker’s Pocket Style Manual.

Writing Rules:

1. Proofread (PRF)
2. Complete Sentences (SENT)
3. Gender-Inclusive Language (GIL)
4. Integrate Quotations (IQ)
5. Past Tense (PT)

This site runs WordPress, a full-featured and open-source blogging software. I have named the site’s custom theme “Clio,” after the muse of history. (The theme is the template that shapes the appearance of each page.) To create this theme, I modifed “Bookish,” by Headsetoptions, which was in turn based on design by NodeThirtyThree.

Once this theme is fully operational, I will post it here for other WordPress users.

I welcome your feedback on the site design.  If you notice any technical problems, especially, please leave me a comment below to let me know.  Thanks!  –DV

Reading, Flanney O’Connor, Wise Blood, 117-231.

The plot thickens in this second half of Wise Blood, as Haze’s preaching scheme collapses in violence and Enoch’s wise blood leads him also to violence and to devolution. These two plot lines intertwine at certain points, but they have very different ending points.

As O’Connor follows Haze, she makes short work of his project to found the Church Without Christ, by having it generate both a doppelganger “Prophet” and Enoch’s crazy scheme for providing the “new jesus.” The Church Without Christ, with its would-be new jesus who is “without blood to waste” (140), represents Haze’s attempt to deny the existence of both sin and truth. Hoover Shoats (a.k.a., Onnie Jay Holy), tries to convince Haze that “if you want to get anywheres in religion, you got to keep it sweet” (157), and he thus offers an “up-to-date” “Holy Church of Christ Without Christ” (153, 151), which, he proclaims to the moviegoers, is “based on your own personal interpretation of the Bible” (153). Here and elsewhere, O’Connor is pretty clearly trying to attack various modern, watered-down forms of Christianity that don’t acknowledge human sinfulness and therefore have no need for grace or redemption. This strand of O’Connor’s critique has many facets that are worth exploring.

By the end of the novel, however, something has happened to Haze, and he undergoes a significant transformation. The critical question to ask is, why does Haze change? And, what’s the nature of his change?

Enoch, too, undergoes a major transformation as his storyline comes to an end. It’s worth asking again, what’s the deal with Enoch? What drives him? What is this “wise blood”? Oddly, the narrative voice comments directly (albeit negatively), on the symbolic meaning of Enoch’s final transformation. How might Enoch’s plotline (including this transformation) be fit into O’Connor’s larger critique. Absurd as Enoch’s story may be, it has a point.

Ultimately, O’Connor does not use Wise Blood to make a positive statement about her vision of the good. Instead, she draws “startling figures” for her “almost-blind” (and presumably hostile) audience in order to expose the absurdity (absence of meaning) in modern (secular) culture. If this interpretation is correct, it raises the question, why might she have taken this approach to conveying her message?

Reading: Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood, to p. 115

Flannery O’Connor wrote Wise Blood to make a point — to offer a critique of modern, secular society and culture. Her 1962 author’s note provides us with some idea of what she was up to. The protagonist Hazel Motes, she tells us, was a Christian malgre lui — a Christian in spite of himself. Put another way, Hazel couldn’t escape from the reality of Christ. O’Connor also reveals that she admires this character for this very reason. Virtually echoing Niebuhr, she concluded her note by asserting: “Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery.”

At first glance, certainly, the novel seems to be something of a mystery, too. It’s crucial to note at the outset that this is a work of fiction, which means that O’Connor chose to make her point indirectly. In other words, the characters are not speaking directly for her, voicing her own opinions. In fact, there are very few statements in the book with which O’Connor would agree. How’s that for oblique? Ironically, one of the few statements that O’Connor would have believed was uttered by the fraudulent blind preacher: “you can’t run away from Jesus. Jesus is a fact” (51).

For another hint about O’Connor’s project, consider this reflection on her own writing, from 1957: “The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him [or her!], and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. . . . For the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures” (Mystery and Manners, 33-34).

Given the “startling figures” that she created in Wise Blood, it’s fair to say that she believed that she was writing the novel for Americans who were “almost-blind.” Haze and Enoch, in particular, can be seen as caricatures, as can many other characters in the novel. (Literary scholars have labeled O’Connor’s prose as “grotesque,” which is a literary style that features disturbing exaggerations.) Through the absurdities that she depicts, O’Connor mocked the absurdities that she saw in the modern, secular world.

So where does this leave us? The first half of this book probably raises more questions than it answers. O’Connor has not yet shown all of her cards. But there several important questions to consider. First, there is the puzzle of Haze’s preaching. Why does he start preaching, and what kind of message does he preach? Also, why does he pursue Asa Hawks and his daughter? In short, what seems to be driving him? Second, what’s the deal with Enoch? What does he mean when he refers to his “wise blood”? Finally, what message might O’Connor be sending through her creation of the general setting of the book? How would you describe the city in which Haze and Enoch meet? What might that city represent, in a symbolic sense? These questions are at least a start, but the novel will continue to develop in surprising directions in its second half!