Revolutionary Writing and Manifestos: The Art of Inspiring Change. Jack Dominick

Transcription

1 Revolutionary Writing and Manifestos: The Art of Inspiring Change Jack Dominick Advanced Composition Mrs. Goransson 9 March 2013

2 Dominick 2 Revolutionary Writing and Manifestos: Where Would We Be? It s easy to look back on history and see an ornately painted picture that has never changed and forever will be the same. This is obviously because history is the past and can never be changed again, an idea we face everyday. However, there is one thing we can do about that stagnant history; we can analyze it, see common courses history flowed through, and apply it to how we arrived to where we are now. Throughout history, there have been many events where one group has been oppressed by another, one king harshly reigned over an entire country, or one government failed to pass the legislations meant to protect its people. When closely inspected, most of these points in history have all taken one specific action to change the world around them and achieve their intended goals. This similar action, in one way or another, turned towards writing. People and their respective societies have consistently used a specific type of revolutionary writing, presenting itself as Manifestos (An Analysis of The Communist Manifesto), pamphlets (American History), newspaper articles (NewsBank), or even the back-page of magazines. This type of writing has been influential on the road our history has taken, making it move the way we see it today. The Manifesto The manifesto can be found in many forms, yet according to the online source wisegeek, it can be described as: A Manifesto is a document that sets forth the principles and goals of an organization. Typically, it is designed to be widely distributed to the public, and

3 Dominick 3 its serves as an official declaration. Often, the document is political in nature, as is the case with the Communist Manifesto, although it can also be employed by artists and other collective groups as a medium of communication. In many instances, a manifesto is highly revolutionary, and is designed to stimulate public dialog. When it comes to presenting ideas in the most basic and controversial forms, the manifesto is where people turn. Generally, the manifesto can be a powerful, demanding, and daring statement of ideas that challenges the government, ways of life, states of science, and the meaning of art (wisegeek). The manifesto can even be so serious that, in some situations, the writer s name has to be anonymous to preserve his or her safety (wisegeek). In times of need where the people are taking it upon themselves to garner support for a cause, writing and manifestos is what plays the most influential part in that support. This is due to the variety of benefits that writing delivers to the people. With these benefits and proper techniques, the revolutionary writing is created, and can be defined by major distinguishing features. As said by wisegeek, they can be long or short, yet they are usually easy to distribute so they can reach the largest amount of people; additionally, it is written in a clear and plain language so that not only the elite but the general population can appreciate and understand it; lastly, the introspective interaction and thought that the readers are driven to make will often cause the reader to pass it on, creating a larger and larger audience (wisegeek). When an idea or statement is made that challenges the way things are at the moment, a manifesto is the ideal tactic for reaching the masses of people and inspiring them to take the same form of thought, and consequently joining the growing force that was developed with the original manifesto. Throughout mankind s past,

4 Dominick 4 this type of writing has played significant roles in the swaying of major historical events that we 8study today, proving that it has its own style and can be employed for a variety of uses. The Communist Manifesto One of history s prime examples of the effect a manifesto can have is finely described by W.J. Rayment from, An Analysis of The Communist Manifesto, who states it as follows: It is arranged, basically, in four sections. The first section introduces the Marxian idea of history as a class struggle. It juxtaposes the conditions and development of various strata of society, freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf...in a word, oppressor and oppressed. It hypothesizes how the development of each of these in history gave rise to the next step in an inevitable historical process culminating ultimately in the rise of one working class. Created by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto set forth ideas that questioned the way government and lives functioned together, stating strictly how the working class has always been in constant struggle and the only way to solve that struggle is to dissolve any form of value movement, allotting for the working class to share all wealth and property for they are the ones that labored to create it (An Analysis of The Communist Manifesto). Today, we just see it as the spark to many communist movements, including the establishments of many governments that people fought against through history. However, in order to really see its effectiveness, one must look at the time it was created and the controversial ideas it proposed. At the time, with imperialist, mercantilist, and militaristic governments, people were oppressed all across the globe; with the exposition of The Communist Manifesto s ideas, it inspired huge

5 Dominick 5 masses of people to band together and fight against the oppression on the working class, leading to the creation of communism and its influence even today (An Analysis of The Communist Manifesto). The Communist Manifesto was revolutionary, meant to hit home with the intended audience, inciting their emotions by highlighting the ways in which they have been oppressed; it also used the common form of being a pamphlet so it could be distributed at a much easier and faster rate, which would then reach the largest amount of people (An Analysis of The Communist Manifesto). The Communist Manifesto proves to be a prime example of revolutionary writing, showing how a piece of written ideas can inspire large amounts of people, even entire countries, to conform to a way of thinking. American Influence: Thomas Paine and Uncle Tom American history has also seen its fair share of this style of writing. During the time before one of America s most iconic points, the Revolutionary War, many advocates for fighting against America s oppressor, Britain, had to do some convincing in order to instigate a movement. The most used and most successful attempts at instigating that movement, and consistent with other points in history, was writing in the form of easily produced pamphlets; one of the best examples of these writing styles is Thomas Paine s pamphlet, Common Sense (American History). In his pamphlet, Paine stayed away from terminology that was incoherent to the many uneducated artisans, craftsmen, and soldiers that his pamphlet targeted (American History). He knew that writing in everyday, common language would be more accepted, and by taking advantage of the press, Paine used his pamphlets as a weapon to garner the support needed to incite the American people into joining forces against Britain (American History). Paine s style of writing and mass producing methods are very similar to the Communist

6 Dominick 6 Manifesto in that it caused an immense, dynamic movement to take place among its readers. A famous quote from Paine s pamphlet, Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, tis time to part, is a good example of the type of language needed to create this emotional appeal that causes the readers to join the message being conveyed (American History). It contains the emotion and feeling needed to portray the message that Paine is trying to convey. This emotional characterization for the style of writing Paine employed exemplifies how it can be important to garnering support for a specific cause. American history has many events that resemble Thomas Paine s, but one another example that characterizes the importance that revolutionary writing can have is Harriet Beecher Stowe and her book Uncle Tom s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe). When Stowe wrote about the injustices that were made towards slaves, a controversial topic during the time of pre-civil War America, it caused an explosive wave of abolitionist idealisms, which would lead to another historic point in American history, the Civil War. It contributed towards the war by personalizing the political and economic arguments about slavery, and with its informal and conversational writing style, it managed to inspire and open up the eyes of many people that speeches, tacts, and newspapers could not (Harriet Beecher Stowe Center). Her characters were able to bring attention to the evils that attained to slavery at the time, causing people to really see how it was affecting them (NewsBank). These attributes show that Stowe s book was one of the primary instigators to the Civil War, proving again how revolutionary writing that is meant to place out ideas and controversial information can have an impact on what course history will take.

7 Dominick 7 Writing s Place in Small-scale Changes Revolutionary writing does not need to take place in large-scale, developmental changes. It can also be found in smaller acts, like having the government reciprocate something that needed to be done. One example of this is The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair, which identified the issues America had in its meat packing industries (Spartacus Educational). According to Spartacus Educational, Upton Sinclair was not a predisposed writer before his famous book. This proves that it does not take much to participate in being a revolutionary writer, only the ambition to inspire change and get something done. Sinclair was paid $500 to investigate an immigrant meat packing plant and to write a book to compile his findings, leaving him with The Jungle, which is what has been analyzed to be the main cause to the creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act, making America s food safer and advertising more truthful (Spartacus Educational). The Jungle contained grotesque and vivid tellings of Sinclair s trek through a meat-packing plant, leaving his readers in utter horror at what happens to their food before they eat it (Spartacus Educational). The disgust that the readers found towards how their food was treated caused them to seek major reform to the issue, leading to the said Pure Food and Drug Act. With the passing of the act, it became clear that even a novelist could change the law, not just lawyers and politicians. By creating such a wide, sweeping movement against the way food was administered, Sinclair is proof as to the importance of revolutionary writing and its importance. So What? The answer to the question is fairly simple, holding true in the past and today. We would not be in the same place we are now if it were not for some kind of revolutionary writing. It does

8 Dominick 8 not take a magnificent master of words to weave together a piece that inspires many. It does not require any doctorate or training. It only takes an idea to be thrust out into the open for the rest of the world to see. Revolutionary writing, manifestos, pamphlets, magazine articles, newspapers, anything that can spread a message to millions of people have been used throughout history to mold it into that painting we see it as today. Without it, or if it had taken form in some other attempt at change, we could be in another home or city or country all together. Writing has always played a vital role in the past, and will remain to in the future.