The Blog of Persuasion

The Way of the Voice Paper 2 final copy

There is voice in every type of writing, be it a paper, article in the news, or even books for entertainment. Voice is in the style of the writing anyone can write using the same main focus, it is the actual writing itself that makes a paper what it is. Any paper can be about the same thing but it is the voice of the paper, the style used, that makes a paper what it is.

            The same could be said about acting. Take the Shakespeare play Hamlet. The main character has been played by many people from Mel Gibson to Kenneth Branagh. They both played the same character, Hamlet, but the way they became that person was different. They spoke the same monologue, the “to be or not to be” speech, but they said it in a very different way. Of course the main difference is that Mel is an American playing Hamlet and Kenneth is Irish, so the accents may have changed the character a bit. Not only the accents would change these characters but since they are from different places they would have had different experiences that would change their interpretation of the writing. In the end the words were still the same, only the style was different.

            One writer may have different voices as well, even if the content is the same. For example the Anne Rice novel series The Vampire Chronicles. The books are all about the same subject, vampires, but they all are different. Each book is from a different vampire’s point of view. Interview with the Vampire is in Louis’ voice, The Vampire Lestat through Memnoch the Devil and the last two books in the series are all in Lestat’s voice. There are also other books in other voices. Armand, Marius, Pandora, Merrick and Vittorio are also vampire’s that Anne Rice has made a voice for. The different stories all have a different voice that is slightly similar to each other.

            I am about to imitate a piece of writing from Frankfurt’s book “On Truth.” I will use my own style but still use the concept that he had when he wrote the book. This imitation will show how my voice can be used even though the words were originally Frankfurt’s.

            No person or society can ignore the truth. These societies can not just have knowledge of the truth and what is false, and that they are important. A society must not forget to help individuals that are trying to be truthful. People must also remember that it is easy to lie, but that it is better to be truthful, or you may lose the ability to see the difference between truths and lies. To be a good human being you must tell the truth.

            If any societies decide to use lies they will eventually become unable to function as a culture. If this happens to a society they will never be the same. A society can not function without truth and facts. They will never grow as a culture if they are used to having beliefs based on lies. To become a great society, we as people, need to remember to use factual truths, and not lies. People need to know and use factual truths to become better people.

            To write this imitation I used an interesting method. First I read the passage about five or six times to make sure I knew what it was actually about. After that I went through and read each sentence three times. Then I wrote the imitation sentence for sentence, so in a way I wrote in a similar style to Frankfurt while still making it m own. I used a slightly similar style to write but I did change his writing and I also used my own ideas to change what he said slightly while still using his original idea as a base for my imitation.

As I wrote this imitation I realized that I wasn’t quite right on what I thought. Maybe it is both content and style that make voice. I tried to keep my writing based on what Frankfurt thought, but I used some of my own thoughts to keep my writing going. For example when I wrote “people must also remember that it is easy to lie, but that it is better to be truthful” I used my own thought on what is best for people, I was also thinking about Harry Potter when I wrote that line so I was trying my best not to use a quote from the 4^th movie’s trailer, “soon we must all make the choice between what is right and what is easy.” I wrote in my imitation, “People must also remember that it is easy to lie, but that it is better to be truthful…” while thinking that I had to make it sound different from that piece of work.

            Even though I used examples on how it is style and not concept that makes voice I realized that my examples actually didn’t help my argument. While the Shakespeare argument might have worked the Anne Rice one didn’t fully work as I originally thought it did. I realized while writing this piece of work that it is content that also makes the writing personal. Anne Rice’s vampires may all have a different style in the books but they are also the only vampires like them. Most vampires can be killed with a stake, sunlight, fire, and beheading; Anne Rice’s vampires can survive being staked, since it doesn’t even hurt them; they can re attach their heads, if they are ever cut off; they make their own fire when the time comes, and they can eventually go out in the sun without being burned to death, they just get a nice tan.

            While writing this essay, and looking back and re-reading it, I realized that the most I ever use voice is in the first and third parts. I noticed that with my voice I have a tendency to use examples from anything I might have read, seen, or heard to get my thoughts out on paper, I also do this when I talk. My imitation may be in my own voice but it isn’t really in my own voice. My voice comes through in the first and last section of this paper. I like to use examples and many other things to show who I am on written paper.

            I now know that it isn’t just style that is the makings of a good voice; it is also the content in the writing that makes it personal. I made my imitation personal to myself by using my style and also my own thoughts mixed into the content. It is not easy to put yourself out of the picture and write simply in either a certain style, or just use certain content to make a piece of work. If a person is really truthful to themselves it is hard to write anything that they don’t believe is their own words written in their own style.