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therealvalkyrie · 4 years ago

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Through the Mirror: Part 1

my body, my music

Pairing/setting: Detective!Levi Ackerman x Female!Ghost!Reader, modern!AU within the Walls

Summary: When you’re murdered one Tuesday morning, can Levi piece together the true circumstances of your death with your help from beyond the grave?

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: dead body, descriptions of blood, swearing, mentions of violence

AN: Welcome to my new series because I have no self control and can’t finish projects before starting others! Lemme just start off by saying updates may come pretty irregularly because I do have a lot of other WIPs to work on, but! I’m really excited about this idea and have a whole lot planned:) I seriously hope you enjoy. After all, who doesn’t love a good murder mystery? Drop into my DMs/askbox/comments/reblogs to let me know what you think! Be kind to yourselves and others. ~valkyrie

“Ah, shit! Hello!? I’m standing right here!”

The woman completely ignores you, stepping carefully over the puddle of blood and across your tiny living room. You cross your arms and pout. She ignores that, too.

“‘Scuse me, boys, let the experts take it from here,” she quips, gently pushing past the two detectives and crouching next to your body on the ground.

It’s ugly, but she’s probably seen worse, you muse from where you’re leaning against the door jamb. It’s only been lying there for a couple of hours, so at least you haven’t bloated to something out of an NCIS episode. Must smell horrid, though, judging by the mask the head detective has pulled over his face.

“So, you said the landlady called at about 7 am?” the ME inquires, cocking her head up to look at the detectives, nylon gloved hands held at the ready.

“7:07 exactly. Said a neighbor made a noise complaint, she came up to check it out, found signs of a forced entry, and called us.” It’s the taller blonde who speaks up, reading from an off-brand pocket notepad in his left hand. The kind you’d find on sale at Staples after Back-to-School season.

Interesting. You lean your head against the wall, eyes trained on the trio. You’d pegged the ill-tempered shorter one as in charge. Maybe he’s just the quiet type.

“Hmm, alright. Moblit, get off your ass and come take the pictures before we move her,” the woman calls to someone behind you, and you turn just in time to get a face full of Moblit’s chest as he walks towards you.

You cringe back with a “God, seriously?” to no response.

“Yes, sorry, right away, Hange!” Moblit hurries past- no, through -you, sidestepping the ottoman and the blood. It feels weird, like a strong wind, but not altogether unpleasant to have someone walk through you, you suppose. You look down at your chest to watch your misty body re-settle into itself before looking back at the group in your living room.

Were it not for the gruesome accents of blood flecked up the walls and your body riddled with stab wounds, you’d chuckle at how all four of them struggled to navigate the space. It’s cramped enough when it’s just you, fitting only a couch, a chair, a coffee table, your fern (Boris), and a narrow IKEA bookshelf. With the four of them plus a dead body, it’s like watching a freaking clown car.

“Sorry, excuse me, Captain, oh, was that your toe—?” Moblit’s struggling the most, having to move to capture different angles with his bulky camera. When he steps on the shorter man’s toe, he positively blanches, fumbling over himself to apologize while the ME laughs openly.

“God, alright, just,” the Captain pinches his delicate nose between a thumb and forefinger, then decides it’s better to wait in the kitchen. “C’mon, Gin, let’s chat in there.”

The Captain and the blonde detective both pass through you on the way back to the kitchen, but you only sigh and shake the tingly feeling of being incorporeal out of your fingers before following them.

“So,” the man called Gin takes the initiative, flipping back through his notebook and standing by the fridge. “I got statements from the landlady and two of the neighbors, numbers 303 and 304 down the hall. 301, directly across the hall, didn’t answer, but I got contact info from the landlady.” He pauses to read and scratch at his whiskery beard. “It was 304 who made the noise complaint, said she heard yelling this morning at around 5:45, and that she normally wouldn’t’ve said anything but it was, quote, the fourth goddamn time this week and I work the goddamn night shift, I deserve some fucking rest, unquote.”

You grin. Mrs. Sheffield was never one to mince words, something you appreciated when your ex-boyfriend got too loud and she took it upon herself to give him a piece of her mind. You catch a glimmer of a smile on the ornery Captain’s face above where he’s pulled his mask down before he gestures for Gin to keep going, keeping his thoughtful gaze fixed on the floor and his back against your countertop.

“Then after she called the landlady, she went to bed, only to be woken by us two hours later.”

“You said she called the landlady at 5:45 and that she works the night shift?”

Gin double checks his notes. “That’s right.”

“And she works at the hospital?”

“Yes, as a scrub nurse on the night shift.”

“But the night shift at the hospital ends at 6:30.”

“It was her night off,” you and Gin say at the same time before you catch yourself. They can’t hear you, anyway. This’d be a lot easier if they could.

Gin plows ahead. “But she says she keeps the same sleep schedule so she doesn’t, ah, fuck up her circadian rhythm.”

The Captain practically snorts at this, itching for a second under his silk cravat (can someone say pretentious) before settling back into a listening silence.

“303 says he didn’t hear a thing. College kid, looked exhausted. Said he was asleep the whole night after he got in at,” a page flip, “11 o’clock last night. Wasn’t much help, but looked genuinely upset when we told him about the murder. Wanted to know if there was anything he could do. Oh, but he did, uh, hang on,” more page flips, “He did tell us that he heard her and her boyfriend arguing a lot. Which is consistent with what Mrs. Sheffield told us.”

“Ex-boyfriend,” you correct into thin air.

“A lover’s spat gone wrong, then,” Mr. Pretentious Captain muses. You huff in annoyance. A lover’s spat. If that’s all that this is written off as you’ll have some serious PD haunting to do. Chris may have been an angry, loud, disruptive manipulator, but he wouldn’t murder you. He didn’t murder you. “Any info on the whereabouts of the boyfriend?”

“Ex-boyf—!”

Blondie cuts you off, “Not currently, but we do have a name: Chris Henderson, works in admin down at the University. Lives across town closer to the Bridge.”

“Send some uniforms to bring him in for questioning. No arrests yet, tell ‘em to keep it friendly.”

“Right, I’ll put Dreyse and Bodt on it.”

“Dreyse, really?” Captain Cravat gives Gin an incredulous look.

“Hey, she may look like a ditz but she gets the job done. And she might get him to let down his guard,” Gin argues, grinning.

“Fine. I’ll meet them at the station, you stay here and make sure that mousy-haired dunce doesn’t fuck up my crime scene.”

“Hey, who’re you callin’ mousy-haired, short stack?” Hange actually sticks her whole head through yours this time, to butt into the conversation, and you shriek and jump away to the other side of your tiny kitchen, now sandwiched between Blondie and Shortstack. The latter twitches and swats at the air by his ear, as though to dislodge a fly, narrowly missing yours. You give him a weird look then turn back to listen to the ME. She’s leaning into the kitchen at an alarming angle, one hand on the doorframe and the other on the end of the gurney you assume is carrying your body. You shudder at the thought of being toted around in a dark, musty, humid glorified coat bag. Ugh.

“—takin’ this baby”-she slaps the gurney twice and you flinch-“back so I can get started on the autopsy, Moblit’s staying to take more pictures and collect forensics. If Eld’s stayin’ here with Mob, does that mean you’re catching a ride with me, Levi?” The question is addressed to Captain Grump on your right, who gives a heavy sigh and pushes off the counter.

“I guess so. I get to choose music though.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” she’s wagging a finger, grinning. “My body, my music!”

“How about my body, my music?” you suggest, following Levi. “I deserve it after the day I’ve had.”

Again, Levi twitches and swats aggressively by his ear, nearly hitting you full in the face this time.

“You hear that, Gin? This place got a mosquito problem or something?”

“I do not have a mosquito problem!” and “No, sir, I don’t hear anything.” overlap in the air.

Captain Levi only grunts, then starts spouting instructions, which Gin notes down. “I want footage from any cameras in the building, and from the shops next door and across the street. I want statements from residents both upstairs and downstairs. I want names, addresses, and numbers of next of kin on my desk by noon, and lastly, I want no one, save for myself, you, shitty glasses, and mousy-hair, in or out of this apartment. Are we clear?”

“Crystal clear, sir.”

“Good. I’m leaving you Braus to help and to show her the ropes of this kind of thing. Even though she’s on the case, she will not set foot in this apartment. I don’t trust her not to leave breadcrumbs in the bloodstains.

“Yes, sir.”

“I expect an in-person report before shift-change this evening. See you then.” Then, he’s sweeping out of the kitchen in pursuit of Hange and the gurney, leaving you to scurry after. As you exit your home, he shoots a young auburn-haired woman in a crisp white blouse and wool slacks a look. “Braus. You’re with Gin. Don’t go in the apartment.”

She straightens up from leaning against the wall with a jolt and brushes croissant crumbs off her front. “Yes, Captain Levi, sir!” It’s slightly muffled by the pastry stuffed into her mouth.

“Tch.”

It’s fascinating watching how Levi and Hange manage to navigate the gurney down the narrow, twisting stairs of your walk-up apartment building. They’re both clearly used to this sort of thing, communicating only in short phrases and grunts when they encounter an obstacle. Occasionally, you offer up a pointer and watch as Levi becomes increasingly irritated.

“Watch out for Mr. Laslow’s cat, he likes to sneak up on ya!”

“Hange, do you hear— shit!” Levi hops to the side, narrowly avoiding the tabby tail as Tubbins McGee whisks past.

“It’s only a cat, Levi, dunno what’s got you so worked up today,” Hange teases, grin echoing your own as you chortle from the landing above them.

Eventually, they spill out onto the sidewalk and into the bright mid-day, and Hange groans loudly, stretching with both hands on her back.

“Ugh. Remind me not to die in there, I’d hate to put someone else through that.”

“Boof, tell me about it,” you commiserate.

“Noted,” Levi snarks.

Hange removes jingling keys from her pocket and unlocks the ME’s van parked along the sidewalk with a beep, then opens the back doors and steps in. You follow, leaning against the cool metal siding to watch.

When they both load into the front seats and the engine turns over, you lean forward between them to listen in.

“So,” Hange starts, smoothly pulling out into the road behind a silver minivan. “I’ll be able to give you a more solid answer in a couple hours, but my initial estimated time of death would be around 5:45 this morning.”

Levi nods, staring out the passenger window while he answers. “That lines up with the neighbor’s story.”

“Theories so far?”

“Well, there’s the boyfriend,” he muses, lifting a hand to rub his chin.

“Too obvious,” you say dully, not bothering to amend the lack of “ex” yet again. “Next theory.”

He’s quiet for a moment, then mutter, almost too quietly for you to catch: “Too obvious, hmm? Next theory....”

You’re momentarily flabbergasted, hand falling through the faux-leather seat back in your shock. Can he actually hear you? You shake out your hand while it re-materializes, tuning in to the conversation as Hange’s responding.

“—a little far-fetched, don’t you think? I mean, has there been any of that activity in this area recently?”

“Mm, I’ll have to touch base with Petra. If there has been, I think it’s worth looking into.”

“What is? Wait, go back,” you frantically plead, leaning further into his airspace. But Hange plows on.

“Oh, it’s Petra, now, hmm? Not Raggedy Anne anymore?” Her tone is teasing, and she glances over to Levi for a reaction.

He doesn’t give her one, just stares out the window pensively before reaching for the radio dial. The stereo blares up into an Oldies station, and you make a disgusted face along with Levi.

“You listen to this shit?”

“Hey, my dead body, my music, sweetcheeks. Don’t like it, you can thumb it back to the PD.”

“How about my dead body, my music?” you suggest again, reaching for the dial at the same time as Levi does. Just as his slender fingers touch it, your hand passes through the whole front console and the oldies are replaced with a terrifyingly loud static screeching.

“Christ, Levi, what’d you do?” Hange shrieks, lunging forward to punch the radio off as you remove your hand.

“Nothing! It just went berserk!”

They bicker while you stare at your offending palm. “Huh. Didn’t know I could do that.”

If you can actually interact with objects, at least to some degree, and if it turns out Levi can hear you.... This whole thing might be easier than you thought.

#levi ackerman x reader #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #aot fanfic #snk fanfic #aot x reader #snk x reader #captain levi x reader #female!reader #hange zoe #moblit berner #eld gin #sasha braus #through the mirror #valkyrie writes #tw:murder #tw:violence #tw:dead body #tw:blood

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theanarchistscookbook · 8 years ago

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Politics and the English Language

George Orwell https://goo.gl/Z0NU7

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad — I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen — but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:

1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.

Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)

2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder.

Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossia)

3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?

Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)

4. All the ‘best people’ from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.

Communist pamphlet

5. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream — as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as ‘standard English’. When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma'amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens!

Letter in Tribune

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged.

DYING METAPHORS. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a ‘rift’, for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.

OPERATORS OR VERBAL FALSE LIMBS. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.

PRETENTIOUS DICTION. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i. e., e. g. and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers(1). The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the size formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

MEANINGLESS WORDS. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning(2). Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, ‘The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality’, while another writes, ‘The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness’, the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations — race, battle, bread — dissolve into the vague phrases ‘success or failure in competitive activities’. This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing — no one capable of using phrases like ‘objective considerations of contemporary phenomena’ — would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase (‘time and chance’) that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier — even quicker, once you have the habit — to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry — when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech — it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash — as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot — it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip — alien for akin — making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning — they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another — but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. The will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line’. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he ‘felt impelled’ to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: ‘[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe.’ You see, he ‘feels impelled’ to write — feels, presumably, that he has something new to say — and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence(3), to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defence of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.

To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a ‘standard English’ which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a ‘good prose style’. On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognise that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin where it belongs.

1946

_____

1) An interesting illustration of this is the way in which the English flower names which were in use till very recently are being ousted by Greek ones, snapdragon becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not becoming myosotis, etc. It is hard to see any practical reason for this change of fashion: it is probably due to an instinctive turning-awayfrom the more homely word and a vague feeling that the Greek word is scientific. [back]

2) Example: ‘Comfort's catholicity of perception and image, strangely Whitmanesque in range, almost the exact opposite in aesthetic compulsion, continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric accumulative hinting at a cruel, an inexorably serene timelessness... Wrey Gardiner scores by aiming at simple bull's-eyes with precision. Only they are not so simple, and through this contented sadness runs more than the surface bitter-sweet of resignation’. (Poetry Quarterly.) [back]

3) One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field. [back]

THE END

____BD____ George Orwell: ‘Politics and the English Language’ First published: Horizon. — GB, London. — April 1946.

Reprinted:

— ‘Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays’. — 1950.

— ‘The Orwell Reader, Fiction, Essays, and Reportage’ — 1956.

— ‘Collected Essays’. — 1961.

— ‘Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays’. — 1965.

— ‘The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’. — 1968.

____ Machine-readable version: O. Dag Last modified on: 2015-09-24

#orwell #george orwell #politics and the english language #politics

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justanothercinemaniac · 8 years ago

Text

Epic Movie (Re)Watch #183 - The Fault in Our Stars

Spoilers Below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: Yes.

Was it a movie I saw since August 22nd, 2009: Yes. #297

Format: Blu-ray

1) This film has a strikingly strong voice throughout.

Hazel: “I believe we have a choice in this world about how we tell sad stories.”

John Green’s original novel similarly has an incredible voice throughout, as it is narrated by Hazel who is always consistent and clear about who she is as a character. This film works with that character/narrative style well, allowing Hazel to be as strong as she is in the book throughout different narrative devices.

2) Shailene Woodley as Hazel Grace.

Hazel is the voice of this film, much as she is in the novel (in that case a little more literally). To start, Hazel is exceptionally honest. She is not stepping on egg shells but she’s also not being a jackass. Woodley is able to play Hazel’s jaded personality in an empathetic and relatable way. Throughout the film Woodley is nothing short of excellent with the ability to be funny, heartbreaking, vulnerable, angry, loving, and whatever else the story/character needs her to be. It is a phenomenal performance from a great actress and I think one of her best. This film needed a strong Hazel and I don’t think they could’ve cast a better one.

3) Remember how I said this film is strikingly honest?

Hazel: “The only thing worse than biting it from cancer is having a kid bite it from cancer.”

4) Angel Elgort as Augustus Waters.

Elgort is able to take a character who could’ve easily been kind of a creepy guy (a guy who works really hard to get with a girl who says no) and makes him wonderfully charming. Augustus could also easily have been a one dimensional pretentious boy toy. But author Green was able to make him more than that in the novel and Elgort is able to do the same in his performance. He infuses Augustus with a crazy amount honesty and heart, while also being able to play his fear and flaws (namely that of oblivion) in a way which makes him human.

5) A key aspect to this film is not only making sure Hazel and Augustus are strong on their own, but also that they have strong chemistry with each other. The key thing is that you are able to see why they’re friends first. There’s this immediate trust, shared sense of interest, shared sense of humor, and an immediate investment they have in each other. Also Woodley and Elgort are just GOOD together, because of whatever the x factor is that results in sexual chemistry.

6) Augustus’ whole thing with the cigarettes is REALLY extra. I kinda dig it.

Augustus [about why he uses cigarettes but doesn’t lit them]: “It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing. A metaphor.”

7) I’m probably going to talk a few times about how wonderfully honest this film is. There is no tiptoeing around cancer, it’s not glorified or romanticized or traumatized (it’s already pretty freaking traumatic). It just is what it is and these kids know what it is.

Hazel [about Augustus getting his driver’s license even though he sucks]: “Cancer perk.”

Augustus: “Total cancer perk.”

8) This is SUCH an important distinction.

Augustus [after he asks Hazel her story and he gets her cancer story]: “No, not your cancer story. Your real story.”

Knowing from first hand experience how easy it is to let cancer define your life, I think it’s important to make sure cancer does NOT define you. That when someone asks you about your story, your mind doesn’t immediately go to cancer. I love that the filmmakers and author John Green included this moment.

9) Laura Dern is remarkably strong as Hazel’s Mom. She is able to be positive, honest, but still plays the conflict of being a parent to a kid with cancer in every scene. It’s a great performance from the veteran actress and I think her relationship with Woodley comes through wonderfully. There’s an honest mother and daughter relationship there. They clearly love each other and are able to joke around with each other, even if they’re not being fully honest (which is how most parent/child relationships are). But when they are honest with each other, it’s a wonderful honesty.

10) Nat Wolff as Isaac.

Wolff (who rose to fame early on with “The Naked Brothers Band”) does a fine job in the supporting role. He fits nicely with Elgort and Woodley, feeling like an honest friend as opposed to a third wheel. His sadness and heartache comes through well, he’s able to be surprisingly funny at times, and it’s just a nice addition to the film.

11) Okay, so when I saw this in theaters I just KNEW who had read the book. And you wanted to know how I knew? Because they started crying when Augustus and Isaac were playing video games. That’s it. NOTHING SAD HAD HAPPENED YET! But still from the back of the theater all I could hear was:

12) I geek out whenever they show the “Buffy” scene in this movie. Because it’s a Fox film, so they use things Fox owns like “Buffy” and Aliens instead of like V for Vendetta from the book (although a poster for the film does appear in Augustus’ bedroom). And there’s a parallel: the scene they’re watching in “Buffy” is one of great intimacy for eventual earth shattering heartache.

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

13) This is sweet.

Augustus [after saying okay with Hazel a few times]: “Perhaps, ‘okay,’ will be our, ‘always.’”

Hazel: “Okay.”

(GIF originally posted by @oliversqueen)

14) This film plays remarkably well with visuals. There’s a lot of texting and email correspondence between characters which end up being important to the plot. This could’ve been boring but they use a nice doodle visual AND phantom images to keep our interest. It’s a nice touch.

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

15) Oh Gus, look at you being all poetic. Subtle.

Augustus [at a piece of public art of a giant skeleton]: “They’re using a skeleton as a playground. Think about it.”

16)

Hazel [after a great day with Augustus]: “And then this happened.”

[Hazel wakes up in the middle of the night because she can’t breathe.]

Can I just say, from personal experience, cancer sucks. It fucking sucks. It seems like someone is doing well, that they’ve reclaimed some semblance of normalcy. Then cancer shows up to beat you down again. Fuck cancer. Cancer can go fucking die in a pit.

17) Well, this is heartbreaking.

Hazel’s Mom [in a flashback to when Hazel was 13 and dying]: “I’m not going to be a mom anymore.”

This is very key to Hazel’s primary conflict in the film, but more on that later.

18) A film is a story told in cuts.

Augustus: “Well, I demand to see this swing set of tears.”

[Immediately cut to Augustus and Hazel sitting on said swing set.]

19) This is very true of the attitude I have known some cancer patients to have.

Hazel [trying to push Gus away]: “Gus, I’m a grenade. One day I’m going to explode and I’m going to obliterate everything in my wake. And, I don’t know, I feel like it’s my responsibility to minimize the casualties.”

20) Nice to know that Augustus is being honest with himself though.

Hazel [after her mom says she and Augustus are cute together]: “We’re just friends.”

Augustus: “Well, she is. I’m not.”

21) The date night between Augustus and Hazel on the town in Amsterdam is very cute and the connection they’re able to portray with almost no dialogue speaks greatly to the chemistry between Woodley and Elgort.

22) Augustus’ declaration of love is done VERY well.

Augustus [almost out of the blue]: “I am in love with you. You heard me. I am in love with me.”

This scene is very organic and honest. It feels like the most natural next step for not only the scene but their relationship as well. It doesn’t feel forced or awkward it makes sense. And I think both Elgort and Woodley play the scene wonderfully.

23) I kinda realized half way through this film is effortlessly feminist. We make a big deal sometimes out of honest female representation in the media but honestly it hardly comes to mind with this film because all the characters - male and female - are easily honest. You don’t even think about it, they just are three dimensional characters throughout. It’s surprisingly refreshing.

24) Willem Dafoe as Peter Van Houten.

I’m not one to say to never meet your heroes, but if you do make sure your expectations are considerably low. This way if they’re a raging asshole like this guy you won’t be too disappointed. Because that’s what Van Houten is. An asshole. A raging, pretentious, alcoholic douche bag who thinks he’s SO above everything. Literally no part of the meeting Hazel and Augustus have with him goes well, leading to a very expected and very cathartic blow up. Dafoe plays the asshole well, making him a character we love to hate and a nice aspect of the film.

25)

Van Houten: “How familiar are you with Swedish hip hop?”

If you want to avoid vulgar lyrics in your music, do NOT google the translation to the Bomfalleralla. It’s worse than you might think.

26) This is SO key to Hazel’s conflict.

Hazel [asking Van Houten about his characters’ lives after the book]: “But that doesn’t mean her family and her friends don’t have a future [after the narrator dies], right?”

As Hazel will observe later, this is her biggest fear. It seems she has made her death with peace and dying but she is so terrified of how she is going to hurt the people she loves. That is the most key internal conflict she has in the film and one which will be consistent until the end.

27) The Anne Frank House.

More than anything else, this serves as incredible show of strength for Hazel. She is fighting to live, and choosing life over death by deciding to be with Augustus even if it’s only for a limited amount of time. The setting of the Anne Frank House drives home the idea of life’s unfortunate impermanence. I’m sure the use of Anne’s narration underscoring the scene acts as some grand literary device but it is difficult for me to analyze it because I am so invested in Hazel’s struggle in the scene.

28) The love scene between Hazel and Augustus is incredible. And not because it’s sexy or because it’s hot or anything. It is because it is honest. There is this incredible comfort they have around each other. They’re comfortable with their scars, with their tubes, with their limitations. They don’t worry that it will turn the other person off. It is a vulnerability born out of complete and utter trust, a trust which is not abused but respected by both parties. It is incredibly tender and just very loving.

29) Did I mention cancer sucks?

Augustus: “I felt an ache in my hip.”

Okay, Hazel just fucking KNOWS what he is about to tell her. As soon as he says, “I felt an ache in my hip,” you can see it on her face. She knows where this is going because she is uncomfortably familiar with how cancer works. And it’s heartbreaking.

30) According to IMDb:

Soon after the film's release, the street bench on which Gus and Hazel had their embrace was stolen. A few months later, it was replaced by the city of Amsterdam.

People suck.

31) It’s nice to see that this film still has a sense of humor and life to it in the face of death.

Augustus [after Hazel says they should wait until after dark to egg someone’s house]: “It’s all dark to Isaac.”

Isaac [after a second]: “Dude, I’m not deaf. I’m just blind.”

32) One of Ansel Elgort’s standout scenes is his breakdown at the gas station. Hazel even observes that she wishes she could say he’d held his courage and sense of humor to the end, but that’s not how life works. This is very honest. This kid is freaking dying of cancer! Of course he’s going to breakdown! And Elgort plays that sadness totally honestly and in an utterly gut wrenching way. It’s his standout scene in the entire film.

33) I love that Hazel calls him out on this.

Augustus: “I mean I was supposed to be special.”

It doesn’t matter if everyone likes you as long as one person loves you. If you’re important to someone it doesn’t matter that you’re not important to everyone. Just because we’re all not famous or infamous or historic does not mean we are not special.

34) Hazel’s biggest fear is that her parents won’t have a life after she dies, because her death is a fact to her. But when her parents tell her that they’re being productive, that her mother is studying social work and that they will have a life after her death, she is just so freaking happy. This incredible weight has been lifted off her shoulders, she is not the grenade she thought she was. It makes me tear up, honestly.

35) Hazel’s eulogy.

This is the climax of the film. The moment the rest of the movie has been building up towards, the moment their relationship has been leading to. It defines that relationship. Woodley shines in her monologue and Elgort shines in his quiet reaction. It is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once and just totally incredible. And this line emphasis the impact they have had on each other’s lives:

Hazel: “Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”

36) There was this analytical post when the movie first came out that pointed out the shirt Hazel is wearing when she learns Augustus died is HIS tee shirt. I just can’t find any post about it because anytime you google, “Fault in Our Stars Tee Shirt,” you get a link to the song by Birdy that’s in the film. If you guys have this bookmarked anywhere I’d love to hear about it, but the fact that Hazel is wearing Augustus’ shirt when she learns he died is heartbreaking to me.

37) Hazel realized something quite important here.

Hazel [after making up a eulogy on the spot different than the one she read for Augustus]: “I didn’t believe a word. But that’s okay…Funerals, I decided, are not for the dead. They’re for the living.”

38) “Not About Angels” is still one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard. It breaks my heart every time. I feel like breaking down and crying whenever I hear it. Here, share in my pain:

youtube

39) Augustus’ final letter to Hazel is a perfect resolution the film. It speaks greatly to not only Augustus’ character but also the relationship he and Hazel had. It is a wonderful emotional resolution which I think just work beautifully.

Augustus [at the end of his letter]: “Okay Hazel Grace?”

The Fault in Our Stars is a moving and honest film supported by a great cast and a wonderful method of adaptation. The spirit of John Green’s source material is alive and well in the film, with performers like Shailene Woodly and Ansel Elgort breathing incredible life into these characters. The film can be funny and heartbreaking all at the same time, but it never falters in its honest approach to these characters. Absolutely wonderful, I suggest everyone see it.

#The Fault in Our Stars #Shailene Woodley #Ansel Elgort #John Green #Hazel Grace Lancaster #Laura Dern #Nat Wolff #Willem Dafoe #Birdy #Epic Movie (Re)Watch #Movie #Film #GIF

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teachanarchy · 8 years ago

Link

Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)

2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder.

Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossia)

Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)

Communist pamphlet

Letter in Tribune

Here it is in modern English:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

1946

_____

3) One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field. [back]

THE END

____BD____ George Orwell: ‘Politics and the English Language’ First published: Horizon. — GB, London. — April 1946.

Reprinted:

— ‘Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays’. — 1950.

— ‘The Orwell Reader, Fiction, Essays, and Reportage’ — 1956.

— ‘Collected Essays’. — 1961.

— ‘Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays’. — 1965.

— ‘The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’. — 1968.

____ Machine-readable version: O. Dag Last modified on: 2015-09-24

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