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101 things to do with and'

Author: Malcolm Hebron
Date: Feb. 2001
From: The English Review(Vol. 11, Issue 3)
Publisher: Philip Allan Updates
Document Type: Article
Length: 2,021 words

Full Text:
The nuts and bolts of language do more than just bind sentences together. Malcolm Hebron shows that even the apparently simple
word 'and' can affect our response to the text

When, in normal life, might we be likely to use the word 'and' a lot? Perhaps when we are telling someone a story quickly, without
refinement: 'and I told him I'd see him tomorrow and in the morning I went to his house and he said...'. It can also lend an air of
dramatic urgency: 'and so I said to him, "Do that again and I'll hit you," and he went really quiet and...'. Rhetoricians call this
polysyndeton (literally, 'many links').

Realism and authenticity

Samuel Pepys uses this loose, unworked narrative style in his description of the Great Fire of London:

Having stayed, and in an hour's time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody to my sight endeavouring to quench it, but to remove
their goods and leave all to the fire; and having seen it get as far as the Steeleyard, and the wind mighty high and driving it into the
city, and everything, after so long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches, and among other things, the
poor steeple by which pretty Mrs Horsley lives...

The tone here conveys haste and earnestness. The author notes his observations without pausing to order or reflect on them;
through the bustling prose, we share his horrified and fascinated gaze, scanning the burning city. With this impression of speed, we
also get a feeling of truth. Because the writer is not apparently organising his account, we are instinctively inclined to believe it: our
attention is entirely on the narrative, not the narrator and any tricks he might be playing. The simple coordinating conjunction 'and'
takes the author out of the frame: we just see what he sees. 'And' here is connective not analytical, and so is quite a loose link: the
statements are related by chance -- what his retina happens to pick up -- not by logic. The informal style of these swiftly slung
together phrases makes us feel as if the prose might go out of control at any moment, and this too creates a powerful sense of
authenticity.

The 'camera effect' of the compound sentence, simply showing us what happens in real time, has been exploited by modern writers
working in a naturalist style. Hemingway is particularly famous for using it to make us feel that we are watching an event live, without
the mediation of a commenting, stage-managing author. Even when the narrator is in the first person, the voice is merely recording
the flow of events, not explicitly guiding our response to them:

They left me alone and I lay in bed and read the papers a while, the news from the front, and the list of dead officers with their
decorations and then reached down and brought up the bottle of Cinzano and held it straight up on my stomach, the cool glass
against my stomach, and took little drinks... (Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms)

Beneath this apparent artlessness, in Hemingway's best writing there is a careful calculation in the construction of sentences. As in
the lines from Pepys, the rhythm helps to evoke the situation: being in hospital feels like this, a monotonous drag, one thing after
another, and the pace of the writing is similarly languid ('and' is really quite a slow word to pronounce). As the speaker kills time, his
experience is punctuated by the occasional sudden perception or sensation which he has time to savour consciously: 'the news from
the front...the cool glass against my stomach' (notice the parallel constructions of these two phrases).The ancient rhetorical term
oratio perpetua seems especially apt to describe Hemingway's style. There is an interesting paradox in our experience of it: like
grainy video and jerky hand-held camera shots, it is supposed to give us a 'natural' view of reality, yet at the same time it is so
unusual that it inevitably draws attention to itself. We are constantly aware of the mannerism of the method (at least until we are
absorbed by it), and this induces a strange, simultaneous involvement in and detachment from the action. We are conscious both of
the scene, and of the window through which we view it.

Chronicle to romance
'And' is of course a basic tool of storytelling. It is the first conjunction we learn, at about 3 1/2 years, when we begin to string
impressions and events together. Hemingway employs it in the passage above to weave a tale out of tiny little moments. But in the
grand narratives of medieval chronicle history, we also find elaborate examples of compound sentences. Here, for example, is the
French chronicler Froissart, in the English translation by Lord Berners (1523-25). The Queen of England has just successfully
pleaded with the King for the lives of the six burghers of Calais, who faced execution in punishment for their town's defiance. If we
pause slightly before each 'and', instead of hurrying over it, we feel a stately, dignified pace. The scenes -- all illustrating the Queen's
exquisite courtesy -- pass before us like pictures in a book of medieval miniatures:

Than the quene caused them to be brought into her chambre, and made the halters to be taken fro their neckes, and caused them to
he newe clothed, and gave them their dyner at their leser; and then she gave ech of them sixe nobles [coins] and made them to be
brought out of thoost [the army] in savegard and set at their lyberte.

The great English writer Sir Thomas Malory mimics this 'historical' style in his collection of Arthurian tales, Le Morte Darthur. A typical
scene is the following, in which Sir Mordred, left in charge in England while King Arthur is away, mounts a rebellion. Again, 'and'
works rather like a full stop or comma. Together with the realistic focus on concrete detail and facts, rather than interior thoughts and
emotions, the device gives Malory's romance the directness and verisimilitude of Froissart's reportage:

As sir Mordred was ruler of all Inglonde he lete make lettirs as thoughe that they had com frome beyonde the see And the lettirs
specifyed that Kynge Arthur was slayne in batayle with sir Launcelot, Wherefore sir Mordred made a parlamente and called the lordys
to gydre and there he made them to chose a kynge and so was he crowned at Caunturbyry and helde a feste there xv dayes And
aftirwarde he drew hym unto Wynchester...

After a time, reading sentences like this can feel heavy and tiring. Grammar helps to explain this: 'and' is called a coordinating
conjunction because the clauses it ties together all have the same weight and value. Every statement in the passage above is equally
important; there is no let-up, no feeling of some things being secondary to others, which would be created by subordinate clauses.
This is in a sense one-dimensional prose, the equivalent of paintings without perspective.

Biblical resonance

A second reason for this 'heaviness' is the enormous influence of a book which, more than any other, is associated with repeated
'and': the Bible. The beginning of Genesis reminds us of the solemn and hypnotic feel which can arise from its frequent reiteration:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of
the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God
saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

The repeated 'and', associated with the divine mysteries, retains its charge of mystical significance even in modern, secular texts.
The modern American novelist, Cormac McCarthy, uses this biblical style to help to create an aura of cosmic significance, as if
actions are revealing something of elemental significance:

They were running on the plain harrying the antelope and the antelope moved like phantoms in the snow and circled and wheeled
and the dry powder blew about them in the cold moonlight and their breath smoked palely in the cold as if they burned with some
inner fire and the wolves twisted and turned and leapt in a silence such that they seemed of another world entire.

(The Crossing, 1999)

Ambiguity

So far we have discussed 'and' in terms of its effects -- on reader-response, mood and rhythm. We should end by considering its
range of meanings. This might initially sound a surprising idea, but what does 'and' mean in the following sentences?

(1) She finished her drink and left the room.

(2) After our argument, my wife went out and I stayed at home.

(3) He had the courage to admit it and I let him off.

(4) Any more noise out of you, and you'll go straight to bed.

I would suggest that in (1), at least out of context, it means 'and then' (connective), in (2) the sense is 'but' (adversative), in (3) it
means 'and so' (introducing a consequence). In other words, 'and' can do the job of other conjunctions, perhaps in a more discreet,
unobtrusive way than they could themselves. Example (4) is more complicated. In Shakespeare's English, 'and' can mean 'if'
(Falstaff: 'And I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived'). In example (4) the word performs much the
same function, by indicating that the second action is conditional on the first.

Some of these hidden depths of meaning can be glimpsed in the following sentences from Washington Square by Henry James. A
daughter is in love with a man called Morris Townsend whom her father, rightly, suspects is only after her fortune. I have italicised the
key words for ease of reference:

She thought of Morris Townsend, and the place was so desolate and lonely that he seemed very far away. Her father remained
absent a long time; she began to wonder what had become of him. But at last he reappeared, coming towards her in the clear
twilight, and she got up to go on.

What does the first 'and' mean? Does it simply introduce the next thought: she thinks of him, then notices the place? Or does it mean
'and as a result': the place becomes desolate because she thinks of him? Perhaps there is a hint of 'but' or 'yet': even though she
thinks of him to cheer herself up, the place still feels lonely.

In the next sentence, James decides to have no conjunction at all, and places the clauses right next to each other -- a device known
as parataxis. Here, it perhaps helps to break the rhythm, to suggest the passage of time; or perhaps the missing link underlines the
father--daughter separation.

The second 'and' appears to mean 'and so', although her action is not the only obvious consequence of her father's approach. Why
does she get up? Might it be to walk on and avoid him? Even though we are seeing things from her point of view, we are still left to
guess her inner feelings and motives. The ambiguity is what matters. To change the word 'and' in this passage into words like 'for'
and 'so' would disturb the placid surface of the prose and detract from its subtle delicacy, shimmering with suggestion and nuance.

These examples by no means exhaust the range of shades and meaning that 'and' has in English. But I hope they show how small
words can do important tasks. To be alive to the richness of a literary text we must become immersed in all its linguistic details in our
reading, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

Malcolm Hebron teaches English at Winchester College.

Further reading

Leech, G. (1969 and many later editions) A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry, Longman. An excellent introduction to the use of
linguistic terms in critical appreciation.

Jakobson, R. and others (1988) Language in Literature, Harvard University Press. Fascinating, but not for the fainthearted.

Hebron, Malcolm

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 Philip Allan Updates

http://www.philipallan.co.uk/englishreview/index.htm
Source Citation (MLA 9th Edition)
Hebron, Malcolm. "101 things to do with and'." The English Review, vol. 11, no. 3, Feb. 2001, p. 27. Gale Literature Resource Center,
link.gale.com/apps/doc/A80012650/LitRC?u=mlin_m_hds&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=3605c6c7. Accessed 19 Oct. 2021.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A80012650