Thomas Hooker, the seventeenth-century Puritan clergyman (and ancestor of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" fame), listed six steps he inserted into his jeremiad sermons to ensure a maximum number of conversions: contrition, humiliation, vocation, implantation [of sin], exaltation, and possession [of grace]. Contemporary anthropologist Susan Harding defines a Puritan jeremiad as an impassioned speech that contains at its core a "tally of moral complaints, or laments," and that is characterized by "the prophet's point of view, the sins of a people, the impending wrath of God, the call to repentance."
Whichever definition you prefer, Ruskin's "Traffic" is most often thought of as belonging to this genre of Old Testament jeremiad. But although this is a useful classification, it doesn't explain why "Traffic" matters. What, in other words, is the difference between Ruskin's town-hall speech and the thousands of jeremiads preached every Sunday by old-time pastors nationwide? Why do we read one in school and fall asleep in the pews during the other?
I submit that Ruskin cuts through the crowd because he improved on the limitations of the Puritan jeremiad. He supplemented the Old Testament rhetorical form with other, more distinctly modern tools — including internal questioning, a delicate balance of sympathy and opposition, and that old breaking-a-dualism trick (he dissolves the sacred/profane binary). In the process, Ruskin crafted a sermon to convert the most hardened skeptic.
You will tell me I need not preach against these things, for I cannot mend them. No, good friends, I cannot: but you can, and you will; or something else can and will. Even good things have no abiding power — and shall these evil things persist in victorious evil? All history shows, on the contrary, that to be the exact thing they never can do. Change must come: but it is ours to determine whether change of growth or change of death. Shall the Parthenon be ruins on its rock, and Bolton priory in its meadow, but these mills of yours be the consummation of the buildings of the earth, and their wheels be as the wheels of eternity? Think you that 'men may come and men may go, but mills go on forever'? Not so; out of these, better or worse shall come; and it is for you to choose which.
Questions
1. One could easily imagine "Traffic" ending here. "Better or worse shall come; it is for you to choose which" seems like a good, solid closer, doesn't it? So why does Ruskin immediately backtrack, saying "I know that none of this wrong is done with deliberate purpose" and shifting the blame from the individual listener to the economists of their society?
2. Which other authors willingly admit their own limitations like Ruskin does? ("You will tell me I need not preach against these things, for I cannot mend them. No, good friends, I cannot;") Would Didion? Wolfe? Johnson?
3. Does Ruskin actually believe the humble confession I quoted above? Or is this another rhetorical tool?
Related Material
- The Prophet's Four-Part Pattern
- The Genre of Sage-Writing (or Secular Prophecy
- Other discussions of "Traffic"
References
Ruskin, John. The Genius of John Ruskin. Ed. John Rosenberg. Various editions (orginally Riverside).
Last modified 16 October 2006