To: The Passive Voice

From: An Admirer

Re: You Will Be Defended By Me

11 • 01 • 05

Dear Passive Voice:

For as long as I can remember I have been told that contact with you is to be avoided. Or rather: for as long as I can remember teachers and style guides have told me to avoid you. My problem with this advice becomes evident from my first sentence: I love you. Those who seek to keep us apart see only your duplicity and lack of focus. They think you're suspicious. Going nowhere. Bad for me. They don't see you as I do: your gentle nature, your gift for subtlety, your quiet charm.

I know you have your flaws. You have, for example, some unsavory friends: confusion, weakness, hypocrisy. The last has done perhaps the greatest damage to your reputation. You see, Passive Voice, your detractors claim you let people get away with things. They often cite the evasive cliché "mistakes were made" as evidence of your slippery character. In a 1994 essay Charles Baxter invites us to contrast that famous passive construction of the modern political era, mistakes were made, with the grammar of a more righteous and responsible time: after the battle of Gettysburg Robert E. Lee lamented, "All this has been my fault. I asked more of the men than should have been asked of them." Even a stoic Lee slips into the passive at the conclusion of his statement, but the point is made: a clear subject and a clear object standing up straight in their rightful places give a sentence order, grammatical and moral. I made a mistake. The General made a mistake. Your mother and I made a mistake. We are sorry. The buck is brought to a halt.

Don't get me wrong: no one likes a weasel. But as the NRA might say, the passive voice doesn't lie to people; people lie to people. Why should you, a construction quite capable of unique and valuable contributions in the right contexts, bear the stain of your abusers' iniquity?

Passive Voice, just as you can shield wrongdoers by diffusing blame when mistakes are made, can you not facilitate modesty and fellow-feeling when achievements are made? "Some excellent work has been done here today," creates a warm feeling of generalized congratulation. It spares the speaker the awkward (if cathartic): "I and a handful of others have done some excellent work here today while most of you have been ineffectual at best and parasitic at worst." It also sidesteps the subtle lie of "We've done some great work here today, gang." (Some of "us" haven't.) Your critics might object that this is just more weaseling, that finessing the attribution of praise is as pernicious as squeaking around the laying of blame. But let's face it: perfect truth, perfect fairness, and amiable social life will never ride the chairlift together. You play your part, Passive Voice, in mediating among the three.

Moreover, to verbally skirt around an issue under circumstances more casual than Civil War battles or grand jury testimony can be both charming and amusing. Which child is more likely to be rewarded with the object he or she desires? Gregory, 10, says, "I want candy." Penelope, 9, remarks coolly, "Candy is certainly seen as desirable by children of my age and disposition." Oh, a little extra precocity might help Penelope's case, but the sophistication of her plea goes beyond mere diction. Positioning the candy as an object of surpassing appeal, Penelope stands aside and lets it take the top spot in her sentence. Adorable! Gregory, by contrast, positions his greedy little self at the centre of the sentence (and undoubtedly the universe). No finesse, no agility, just the grasping sticky hands of the insistent subject: I I I.

Sometimes it is good for the subject to stand aside. Or rather, it is good for the noun that is the most obvious candidate for the role of subject (nothing and no one is divinely designated the subject, after all) to stand aside. The resultant wriggling about can be sloppy and disorienting, but it's not the end of the world. I recently attended a beautiful dance show. For over an hour, I watched the dancers' exquisite bodies stretch and circle to remark on certain matters that had not previously occurred to me or to my own ill-used flesh. When they finished and I moved to applaud, I found myself in a horrible state: slumped, hunched, bent, shriveled. My body must have looked to those dancers, if they happened to see it in the crowd, like a sour manifesto denouncing everything they had just offered. In my awe I had been completely forgetful of my own sorry shape. And that was perfect. The dance was watched! I watched it? Sure. Whatever.

Strunk and White, for whose worthy volume The Elements of Style a song cycle was recently composed, justly call the active voice "more direct and vigorous" than you. Vigour can be a fine thing. So can directness. But they are not the only things. Passive Voice, in the right hands you can create a meandering, decentering sentence I would take over a laconic and vigourous one any day. Even when things go too far--when you are used injudiciously and sentences become long and confusing--the nouns and verbs are all still there, breathing among the shrapnel of articles and prepositions. Relationships are a little muddy, but here we all are. Sounds like a pretty good sentence to me.

Passive Voice, you are reviled because you throw us off balance and you take up too much time. In a point-form world obsessed with causation there is little patience for your vague and circuitous ways. You offer incomplete information and you offer it inefficiently. They say this makes you inferior. But it can also make you beautiful.

Passive Voice, let's run away together. May we spend long afternoons attempting to decipher one another's tripping constructions. May we forget ourselves and throw up our hands at our imperfect knowledge. May our love at last be understood.

Until then,

An Admirer