The Rider And The Writer In “The Ring Of Time”:
The Rider and the Writer in “The Ring of Time”:
A Rhetorical Analysis
In “The Ring of Time,” an essay set in the gloomy winter quarters of a circus, E. B. White appears not yet to have learned the “first piece of advice” he was to impart a few years later in The Elements of Style:
Write in a way that draws the reader's attention to the sense and substance of the writing, rather than to the mood and temper of the author. . . .To achieve style, begin by affecting none--that is, place yourself in the background. (70)
Far from keeping to the background in his essay, White steps into the ring to signal his intentions, reveal his emotions, and confess his artistic failure. Indeed, the “sense and substance” of “The Ring of Time” are inextricable from the author's “mood and temper” (or ethos). Thus, the essay may be read as a study of the styles of two performers: a young circus rider and her self-conscious “recording secretary.”
In White's opening paragraph, a mood-setting prelude, the two main characters stay hidden in the wings: the practice ring is occupied by the young rider's foil, a middle-aged woman in “a conical straw hat”; the narrator (submerged in the plural pronoun “we”) assumes the languorous attitude of the crowd. The attentive stylist, however, is already performing, evoking “a hypnotic charm that invite[s] boredom.” In the abrupt opening sentence, active verbs and verbals carry an evenly measured report:
After the lions had returned to their cages, creeping angrily through the chutes, a little bunch of us drifted away and into an open doorway nearby, where we stood for awhile in semidarkness, watching a big brown circus horse go harumphing around the practice ring.
The metonymic “harrumphing is delightfully onomatopoetic, suggesting not only the sound of the horse but also the vague dissatisfaction felt by the onlookers. Indeed, the “charm” of this sentence resides primarily in its subtle sound effects: the alliterative “cages, creeping” and...
View Full Essay