The Rhetorical Question |
by Walter Sherman Atwood (1887-1974) |
| A commentator writing about the demands of rioting college boys mentioned the
importance of distinguishing between the rhetoric of their demands and their logic. His point is well taken, even if most teachers have met this problem and surmounted the difficulty in their first year of teaching. The rhetorical question by definition is one that requires no answer, and rhetoric is defined as artificial eloquence. I am often asked the rhetorical question, "Why does it take you so long to eat?" No answer is really expected, but it is assumed that I am in some way queer. I resent the assumption, not the question. I protest that we all have some idiosyncrasies. To begin with, it was not my fault that we lacked enough milk in my day to provide proper calcium in my diet. I lost my first teeth early, and from the age of six I was almost never without toothache until I had lost all my teeth. With false teeth while still in high school, eating was always a difficult problem, which I have known for twice as long as most folks my age. Recently, I found myself choking on a piece of meat I tried to swallow too soon. This is of course embarrassing as a breach of manners at table. It has been my misfortune also for the last five years to have to take pills twice a day. On three separate occasions, I have found it impossible to swallow these pills. On one occasion when two pills were due at about the same time both stuck in different spots on the way down, and it took a long time for them to dissolve. I finally had to break the pills in half before swallowing. Most serious is the memory that my father starved to death very slowly before I was eleven years old. He had a growth in his throat, and no one knew how to operate on it. I remember the young doctor wringing his hands and saying there wasn't anything more he could do. Perhaps he was born with a narrow gullet, which I may have inherited. Perhaps I have a growth. Am I supposed to eat faster because everybody else does? Where are we going in such a hurry? Why not relax at table? I see no merit in trying to be the first to leave the table. If I appear to have answered a rhetorical question, it was my intent to offer evidence to support my logical position as a slow eater. For I am convinced of the merit of chewing our food thoroughly, simply because it is digested more effectively the smaller it is when it reaches the stomach and intestines. Wild animals are equipped with stomachs that can take care of hastily swallowed food. But we are not dogs or wolves to lose our food if we do not swallow it before someone takes it out of our teeth. So if I take an hour or longer to eat, I notice often that my questioner takes even longer to read the local news. I read the same news paper in the five minutes it takes him to finish his supper. Years ago someone introduced a fad of chewing each bite of food a hundred times before swallowing it. This fad called Fletcherizing was so called from the man who advocated it. As a fad, it was not harmful, and in view of the fact that only when food is on the tongue can we really taste it, chewing the food a long time ought to be more rewarding that to spend the same time poring over every last bit of gossip in the local paper. |
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© Crimson Star, last updated on Friday, January 05, 2001 09:10 PM |
