Immediately, then, in the opening sentence of the second paragraph, the narrator forsakes the role of group spokesman ("Behind me I heard someone say . . . ") as "a low voice" responds to the rhetorical question at the end of the first paragraph. Thus, the two main characters of the essay appear simultaneously: the independent voice of the narrator emerging from the crowd; the girl emerging from the darkness (in a dramatic appositive in the next sentence) and--with "quick distinction"--emerging likewise from the company of her peers ("any of two or three dozen showgirls"). Vigorous verbs dramatize the girl's arrival: she "squeezed," "spoke," "stepped," "gave," and "swung." Replacing the dry and efficient adjective clauses of the first paragraph are far more active adverb clauses, absolutes, and participial phrases. The girl is adorned with sensuous epithets ("cleverly proportioned, deeply browned by the sun, dusty, eager, and almost naked") and greeted with the music of alliteration and assonance ("her dirty little feet fighting," "new note," "quick distinction"). The paragraph concludes, once again, with the image of the circling horse; now, however, the young girl has taken the place of her mother, and the independent narrator has replaced the voice of the crowd. Finally, the "chanting" that ends the paragraph prepares us for the "enchantment" soon to follow.
But in the next paragraph the girl's ride is momentarily interrupted as the writer steps forward to introduce his own performance--to serve as his own ringmaster. He begins by defining his role as a mere "recording secretary," but soon, through the antanaclasis of " . . . a circus rider. As a writing man . . .," he parallels his task with that of the circus performer. Like her, he belongs to a select society; but, again like her, this particular performance is distinctive ("it is not easy to communicate anything of this nature"). In a paradoxical tetracolon climax midway through the paragraph, the writer describes both his own world and that of the circus performer:
Out of its wild disorder comes order; from its rank smell rises the good aroma of courage and daring; out of its preliminary shabbiness comes the final splendor. And buried in the familiar boasts of its advance agents lies the modesty of most of its people.Such observations echo White's remarks in the preface to A Subtreasury of American Humor: "Here, then, is the very nub of the conflict: the careful form of art, and the careless shape of life itself" (Essays 245).
Continuing in the third paragraph, by way of earnestly repeated phrases ("at its best . . . at its best") and structures ("always bigger . . . always greater"), the narrator arrives at his charge: "to catch the circus unawares to experience its full impact and share its gaudy dream." And yet, the "magic" and "enchantment" of the rider's actions cannot be captured by the writer; instead, they must be created through the medium of language. Thus, having called attention to his responsibilities as essayist, White invites the reader to observe and judge his own performance as well as that of the circus girl he has set out to describe. Style--of rider, of writer--has become the subject of the essay.
The bond between the two performers is reinforced by the parallel structures in the opening sentence of the fourth paragraph:
The ten-minute ride the girl took achieved--as far as I was concerned, who wasn't looking for it, and quite unbeknownst to her, who wasn't even striving for it--the thing that is sought by performers everywhere.
Then, relying heavily on participial phrases and absolutes to convey the action, White proceeds in the rest of the paragraph to describe the girl's performance. With an amateur's eye ("a few knee-stands--or whatever they are called"), he focuses more on the girl's quickness and confidence and grace than on her athletic prowess. After all, "[h]er brief tour," like an essayist's, perhaps, "included only elementary postures and tricks." What White appears to admire most, in fact, is the efficient way she repairs her broken strap while continuing on course. Such delight in the eloquent response to a mishap is a familiar note in White's work, as in the young boy's cheerful report of the train's "great--big--BUMP!" in "The World of Tomorrow" (One Man's Meat 63). The "clownish significance" of the girl's mid-routine repair appears to correspond to White's view of the essayist, whose "escape from discipline is only a partial escape: the essay, although a relaxed form, imposes its own disciplines, raises its own problems" (Essays viii). And the spirit of the paragraph itself, like that of the circus, is "jocund, yet charming," with its balanced phrases and clauses, its now-familiar sound effects, and its casual extension of the light metaphor--"improving a shining ten minutes."
The fifth paragraph is marked by a shift in tone--more serious now--and a corresponding elevation of style. It opens with epexegesis: "The richness of the scene was in its plainness, its natural condition . . .." (Such a paradoxical observation is reminiscent of White's comment in The Elements: "to achieve style, begin by affecting none" [70]. And the sentence continues with a euphonious itemization: "of horse, of ring, of girl, even to the girl's bare feet that gripped the bare back of her proud and ridiculous mount." Then, with growing intensity, correlative clauses are augmented with diacope and tricolon:
The enchantment grew not out of anything that happened or was performed but out of something that seemed to go round and around and around with the girl, attending her, a steady gleam in the shape of a circle--a ring of ambition, of happiness, of youth.
CONCLUDED: Rhetorical Analysis of E.B. White's "The Ring of Time" (page 3)
