Eloquence is Problematic

"We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire". - Thoreau

I absolutely agree with this quote. I do find it a little ironic coming from Thoreau, seeing as his writing is very pretentious and he sure does practice what he preaches with his essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. This essay was tough to get through in class, I'm not going to lie. I found myself drifting off and completely indifferent to what Thoreau was trying to say. Because while I appreciate and love eloquence with all my soul, I tune out as soon as I hear it in an arrogant way. And that is all I heard coming from this essay.

I think that eloquence is something important towards our diction and can affect how we carry ourselves. I have found in my own experience that when I speak more eloquently, I find that I am more grounded in my stance on different topics and that I am more in control of a conversation or debate. When I am more casual with my language, it is easier for my words to be overlooked and for my points to not be taken seriously, hence why I reserve my eloquence for adults that disregard my opinion right off the bat. So when Thoreau wrote that we enjoy eloquence for its own sake, I can agree because using eloquence myself causes me to feel more confident in myself and my opinions.

I want to use an example of eloquence gone wrong. I find the writings of John Green to be...problematic in some ways, and I think that it stems from his form of eloquence. Now, do not get me wrong, I find him to be a very successful writer and I cried along with everyone else when I went to go see The Fault in Our Stars at the movies. Twice. (Anthony and Other will remember Dave and the Sour Patch Kids from one of these movies). Anyway, I find his eloquence to be the only reason why people really read his books. He is a man of pretty words and profound statements that apparently shake the core of every reader out there with its deepness. Or something to that extent. I will take Paper Towns as an example. In this book, the main character Quentin builds up a false image of popular Margo Roth Spiegleman. She leaves, he chases after her with his band of misfits, and at the end he realized that he never needed her at all and that she was something broken instead of beautiful. One way that he emphasized this point was with the line:

"What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person".

Now, that's a beautiful quote and is basically the whole plot of the book. But if one looks at this quote, it is just a glaring truth in everyday life that was twisted around to look profound and lovely. All this did was romanticize distorting another person and their flaws into a perfect being when that isn't possible.