Surprising Sentences, Part 9: Frederick Douglass on "Good" Overseers

In the seminal Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), Frederick Douglass writes these two sentences on page 12:

He whipped, but seemed to take no pleasure in it. He was called by the slaves a good overseer.

Douglass is referring to a slave overseer who succeeded a particularly savage one on his plantation. The ironic contradiction of describing a "good overseer" as taking no pleasure but still engaging in whipping follows a gut-wrenching description of how this overseer's predecessor felt extreme enjoyment in swearing and sweating as his whip tore through the flesh of slaves, all the more aggressively as their cries grew louder and more of the same precisely where their blood most flowed. The power of these sentences is in the false sense of relief they give the audience after reading pages of barbaric, inhuman treatment.

Picking up this book decades after reading it as a college student remains an extraordinarily jarring sensory experience as expressed by an eyewitness in the plainest language possible.

Surprising Sentences, Part 8: Harold Bloom on Shakespeare

A third-way through Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? and midway through a chapter titled "Cervantes and Shakespeare," Yale professor and literary critic Harold Bloom transitions from the Spaniard to the Englishman with this sentence: 

Nothing explains Shakespeare, or can explain him away.

On its surface, this sentence, semantically imaginative as it is, seems hardly surprising coming from Bloom, who a decade earlier in The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, argued for placing Shakespeare in the center of the Canon. Indeed, critics familiar with the other writers and works that enter Bloom's lofty literary congregation would likely agree with his assessment. Yet this sentence surprises for three reasons:

1. Its brevity. The eight-word sentence is not typical of Bloom, who usually peppers his narratives with lengthy compound-complex constructions. 

2. Its absoluteness. As hyperbolic as Bloom may appear to those who have heard his flamboyant rhetoric, he is generally careful not to employ absolutes like nothing, but here his exuberance over Shakespeare's brilliance gets the best of him.

3. Its placement. Bloom begins his Shakespearean discussion with a statement that preempts discussion, realizing his readers know he is about to try explaining the Bard, if not explain him away.

Surprising Sentences, Part 7: Marc Antony on Caesar and His Assassins

Today, March 15, is the Ides of March, the date a soothsayer omnisciently and ominously warns the Roman dictator about in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. In honor of Marc Antony's fabled and remarkably persuasive speech on the steps of the Roman Forum before "friends, Romans, countrymen," I'd like to look at three of his surprising sentences. In all but three sentences of Antony's 1,100-word speech, interrupted several times by his passionate audience's outbursts, he directly addresses them about Caesar, his assassins Brutus and Cassius, himself, or themselves. Antony brilliantly builds a case to transform his listeners from a self-righteous crowd praising Caesar's death to a vengeful mob seeking retribution for his unjust murder, and those three surprising sentences of uncertain intention and destination elevate Antony's entire speech to transcendent doctrine.

1. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. This sentence comes immediately after Antony's famous appeasement, "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." On the surface, we can believe that Antony is directly addressing the people assembled before him. Yet the pronouncement seems more targeted toward Fate while subtly positioning those gathered to feel a sense of guilt for their rush to judgment. 

2. O judgment—thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason. Antony speaks these words nearly two minutes later, as he has mounted his line of reasoning to win Roman souls in avenging Caesar's death. But who is he speaking to? He utters this sentence after challenging his audience, "What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?" He cannot be too direct in his accusation for fear of throwing down the gauntlet too soon against volatile, potential allies. Perhaps he spits out these well-planned words to appear like a mournful child who just lost his friend. While making this incantation abundantly clear to his audience, he wants to make it appear like an emotional, irresponsible outburst, as he follows it with "Bear with me, my heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me."

3. Judge, O you Gods, how dearly Caesar loved him! Another four minutes later, Antony claims that an unsuspecting Caesar was killed by a man he loved, a man he trusted and respected. He pretends this statement to be an ephemeral plea to the gods, the ultimate, omnipotent audience. With this suggestion, Antony makes the execution of his friend—and a friend of all Romans—even more heinous, arousing the populace's sense of trust and justice. He now has his frenzied audience in the palm of his hands.

Ambiguity, both lexical (word meaning) and syntactical (word order), plays a large role in surprising an audience, but so does context. These three sentences from Julius Caesar surprise us because, quite literally, we are not sure where the speaker is coming from.

A Special Golden Anniversary

On this day fifty years ago, Monday, March 8, 1971, I was a 17-year-old high school senior. When I came home from school, my father asked me, "How would you like to see the fight tonight?" Immediately, I felt blood rushing through my body. This was new emotional territory. Dad was uncharacteristically talking to me like a friend, not as if I were a nuisance, hindrance, or burden.  

After regaining my sensibilities, I understood the situation. Dad was referring to the boxing match billed as The Fight of the Century, a battle of undefeated heavyweight titans, the challenger Muhammad Ali against the champion Joe Frazier. Ali was 29, a dancer and jabber in the ring with a record of 31 wins, 25 by knockout, and no losses. In 1967, after Ali famously changed his name from Cassius Clay and defended his title nine times in three years, he faced the injustices of having his heavyweight championship revoked, his license to box in every US state denied, and his US passport stripped, effectively eliminating any chance of his making a living through boxing. He now found himself as a 6-5 betting underdog for the first time since 1964, when he was an 8-1 underdog and captured the championship as a 22-year-old fast-talking, abrasive, egotistical, against Sonny Liston. Frazier was 27 with a record of 26 wins, 23 by knockout. Like Ali, he was an Olympic gold medalist but he did not renounce his achievement, winning the hearts of the establishment. He earned the heavyweight title three years earlier and successfully defended his crown six times. His bob-and-weave style and powerful punching made him seem invincible in the boxing world until Ali's return. 

So much hype surrounded this fight, primarily due to Ali's remarkable promotional skills and growing reputation as a cultural folk hero and antiwar activist. In the weeks leading up to the bout, the boxers appeared in one television commercial after another. The print and electronic news media featured daily stories about the upcoming event. Each man was guaranteed an unprecedented $2.5 million, and the match would attract a full house of 20,000-plus at Madison Square Garden in New York City as well as 30 million closed-circuit viewers worldwide.

I knew Dad well enough to realize his invitation was not a treat. I was earning an average of $50 per week as a part-time janitor at White Castle, so the ticket price of $20 to see the fight live on screen was steep. But the viewing opportunity seemed like a worthwhile investment for an idealistic, inspired teenager. 

In 1971, I believed that Dad and I could not have been more different. He was an immigrant from Malta with less than an elementary school formal education. He survived the World War II Axis bombings on the island. After the war, he became a police officer in his one-cop village hometown of Mgarr, population 2,000. By 21 he married, by 22 he became a father, by 26 he moved to America, and by 27 he had a wife and three children to support with limited English proficiency as an unskilled laborer. His first job was as a porter, and he eventually became a butcher. He often told us how much he loved America because of the opportunities it gave his children. I was a longhaired pacifist ready to graduate from high school and enter the City University of New York system, worried about the prospects of being drafted into the Army to fight in the Vietnam War. I was growing up in the midst of a cultural revolution in which people were openly questioning their government's right to conduct an apparently unwinnable war 9,000 miles away where millions of innocent people were being slaughtered. I did not dare challenge my father about his beliefs. I understood them to be valid for him, yet my experience sent me in an entirely different direction.

Our stakes for attending the fight were different too. Dad was a chronic sports gambler, so I figured he had money on the outcome. He enjoyed the sport, having arrived in the US during the boxing golden age when Rocky Marciano, Archie Moore, and Sugar Ray Robinson were champions of their own weight class in their heyday. I saw the match as a chance for Ali to avenge the injustices heaped upon him over the past five years. I was not alone in thinking this way. In fact, one could likely tell the politics of a person just by knowing who they were rooting for, the radical Ali or the traditionalist Frazier. 

Dad and I had rarely gone anywhere together since the mid-1960s, when he would occasionally get my brother and me bleacher seats for games at Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds. That was a lifetime ago for a teenager, and now we were headed for the Loew's American Theater in Parkchester, the Bronx, to see the fight. That night I felt like a man, like Dad's brother. The atmosphere in the movie house was electric, divided in half by opposing loyalists. Dad, a 46-year-old working class man, and I, his rebellious son, were rooting for the same person, smiling when Ali's trembling hand held a note predicting Frazier would fall in the sixth round, holding our breath throughout the difficult fight, heartbroken when Ali hit the canvas in the fifteenth and final round, disappointed when he lost the fight in a unanimous decision, and embarrassed for him when he did not crawl on his knees across the ring to Frazier and say, "You are the greatest," as he said he promised he would if he lost.   

Everything changed since March 8, 1971, half a century ago. The winner Frazier would lose his title to the behemoth George Foreman less than two years later, and Ali would reclaim the title from the same man, who seemed so indomitable, less than two years after he had become champion. The Parkchester movie theater is gone. My Bronx high school changed its name from Saint Helena's to Monsignor Scanlan. Dad is gone 24 years. Since I became a father myself 39 years ago, I have seen how much like my father I really am. And how the Fight of the Century still binds us.

Surprising Sentences, Part 6: Lyndon B. Johnson on Resigning the Presidency

At this point in the WORDS ON THE LINE "Surprising Sentences" series, you have likely seen how character and context drive the unexpectedness. For examples of character, our jaws would drop if the blustering and cocky Muhammad Ali had said in his lifetime, "I wish I were the greatest" or if the regal and prim Queen Elizabeth II exclaimed, "Yo, what's up, baby!" As for context, we would be stunned if a stage actress in the middle of a climactic scene hollered, "That jerk in the audience better stop coughing, or I'll personally kick his butt out of the theater," or to hear someone trapped in a building fire say, "I wonder what time it is."

Character and context can also collaborate in a collision that creates consternation. Take United States President Lyndon B. Johnson's famous speech of March 31, 1968, an election year, when he said:

Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.

That sentence, which Johnson said on live television from his desk in the Oval Office, was a shocker for many reasons. For one, it came in the last minute of a 4,116-word, 40-minute speech that began, "Good evening, my fellow Americans. Tonight I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia." His audience was expecting to hear about the USA's political and diplomatic strategy for ending the Vietnam War, not about the political plans of this tall Texan who rarely strayed from the point. Also, he had won the 1964 presidential election against Republican Barry Goldwater by an overwhelming majority of 16 million votes, 61.1 percent of the electorate, taking 44 states and 486 of 538 electoral votes a year after assuming office of the presidency amidst the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It would be difficult to overtake a sitting president known for his confidence and cunning in striking bipartisan deals in the middle of a war. 

While in hindsight, it might be easy to say the Vietnam War had become increasingly unpopular in the United States as Johnson had spent most of his term escalating it with endless bombings and ground troop deployments, those words nevertheless stunned his audience that night 53 years ago.

Surprising Sentences, Part 5: Taylor Simone Ledward's Golden Globe Speech

"He would thank God. He would thank his parents. He would thank his ancestors for their guidance and their sacrifices."

With these words, Taylor Simone Ledward, began her acceptance speech on behalf of her late husband, Chadwick Boseman, for winning the Golden Globe for best actor in a motion picture drama for his unforgettable, transcendent performance as Levee Green in August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. The emotional impact of a young widow tearfully speaking for her deceased husband from her the privacy of her home during for a pandemic is visceral. Ledward adds to the poignancy of the moment not by introducing herself and her relationship to Boseman, not by mentioning Boseman's name, and not by any self-reference, all which would be expected. Instead, she chooses the third-person he for the first eight sentences of her speech. This technique brings an immediacy and intimacy that make us feel we too have lost someone special in our life. And we have.

In only 12 sentences and 178 words, Ledward graciously fits in the given and family names of 18 people who collaborated with Boseman on the last performance of his life while terminally ill with colon cancer at age 43. She also masterfully uses repetition with plain yet powerful language, as in this sentence: "He would say something beautiful, something inspiring, something that would amplify that little voice inside of all of us that tells you you can, that tells you to keep going, that calls you back to what you are meant to be doing at this moment in history," those final words so apt for the character her husband played.

Another surprise comes in the final four sentences, when Ledward freely shifts persons with the abandon of the jazz musician her husband portrayed in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. She uses them all, from the first- and third-person singular, to the first-person plural, and, most remarkably, the second person, when she addresses her husband directly: "And honey, you keep 'em coming," making the final two-word sentence, "Thank you," wonderfully ambiguous. Is she referring to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which just endowed Boseman with the Golden Globe, or to Boseman himself for their all-too-brief relationship?