hw-3 assignment

Writing to Connect, from Chapter One of Writing to Change the World

Writing to Connect, from Chapter One of Writing to Change the World by Mary Pipher, 

pp. 19-22

In the dark times, will there be singing?

Yes. There will be singing about the dark times. 

-Bertolt Brecht

There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. 

-Vincent Van Gogh

        The first book to change my view of the universe was The Diary of Anne Frank. I read Anne's diary when I was a twelve-year-old, in Beaver City, Nebraska. Before I read it, I had been able to ignore the existence of evil. I knew a school had burned down in Chicago, and that children had died there. I had seen grown-ups lose their tempers, and I had encountered bullies and nasty schoolmates. I had a vague sense that there were criminals - jewel thieves, bank robbers, and Al Capone-style gangsters - in Kansas City. and Chicago. After reading the diary, I realized that there were adults who would systematically kill children. My comprehension of the human race expanded to include a hero like Anne, but also to include the villains who killed her. When I read Anne Frank's diary, I lost my spiritual innocence. 

        In September 2003, when I was fifty-five years old, I visited the  Holocaust Museum (Links to an external site.) , in Washington D.C., to view the  Anne Frank (Links to an external site.)  exhibit. I looked at the cover of  her little plaid diary (Links to an external site.) , and at pages of her writing, at her family pictures. Meip Gies (Links to an external site.), Otto Frank's employee who brought food to the family, spoke on video about the people who hid in the attic. She said that Anne had always wanted to know the truth about what was going on. Others would believe the sugarcoated version of Miep's stories, but Anne would follow her to the door and ask, "What is really happening?" 

     The museum showed a  short film clip of Anne (Links to an external site.)  dressed in white, her long hair dark and shiny. She is waving exuberantly from a balcony at a wedding party that is parading down the street. There are just a few seconds of film, captured by a filmmaker at the wedding who must have been entranced by her enthusiasm. The footage is haunting. Anne's wave seems directed at all of us, her small body casting a shadow across decades. 

        At the end of the exhibit, attendees hear the voice of a young girl reading  Anne's essay, "Give," (Links to an external site.)  a piece inspired by her experience of passing beggars on the street. She wonders if people who live in cozy houses have any idea of the life of beggars. She offers hope: How wonderful it is that no one has to wait, but can start right now to gradually change the world." She suggests action: "Give whatever you have to give, you can always give something, even if it's a simple act of kindness." And she ends with: "The world has plenty of room, riches, money, and beauty. God has created enough for each and every one of us. Let us begin by dividing it more fairly."

      Even though Anne Frank ultimately was murdered, she managed, in her brief and circumscribed life, to tell the truth and bequeath the gift of hope. She searched for beauty and joy even in the harsh, frightened world of the attic in which her family hid from the Nazis. Her writing has lived on to give us all a sense of the potential largesse of the human soul, even in the worst-case scenarios. It also reminds us that, behind the statistics about war and genocide, there are thousands of good people we have a responsibility to help.

Let the streams of life flow in peace.

Turn from violence.

Learn to think for a long time how to change the world.

How ot make it better to live in.

-Quetzalcoatl  

        All writing is designed to change the world, at least some small art of the world, or in some small way perhaps a change in the reader's mood or in his appreciation of a certain kind of beauty. Writing to improve the world can be assessed by the goals of its writers and/or by its effects on the world. Most likely, Mary Oliver did not write  her poem "Wild Geese" (Links to an external site.)  to inspire environmental activists and yet environmental activists found it motivational. Bob Dylan claims he had no intention of composing a protest song when he penned  "Blowin' in the Wind," (Links to an external site.)  but it became the anthem for many causes of the last half of the twentieth century. On the other hand, musicians like  Tori Amos (Links to an external site.) ,  the Indigo Girls (Links to an external site.) , and the band Ozomatli (Links to an external site.), do hope to influence their listeners in specific ways, and they succeed. Looking back,  Rachel Carson, in Silent Spring (Links to an external site.) , satisfies both intent and effect: she wrote the book to stop the use of certain pesticides, and follow its publication DDT was banned in the United States. 

        My dad told me about a rule he and other soldiers followed in the Pacific during World War II. It was called the Law of 26, and it postulates that for every result you expect from an action there will be twenty-six results you do not expect. Certainly this law applies to writing. Sometimes a book intended to have one effect has quite another. For example,  Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle (Links to an external site.)  to call attention to the exploitation of the immigrant labor force and their working conditions in factories, yet it led to an outcry over unsanitary conditions in the meat industry and helped establish uniform standards for beef processing and inspection nationwide.