The Inadequacy of Language

"Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars."-Gustave Flaubert "Madame Bovary"

In my English 297 class we just finished reading the book Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. One of the novel's motifs is the inadequacy of language and the way that it serves to trap people in words and emotions dictated by the culture that they live in. The protagonist is Emma Bovary, a woman of the middle class who lives in her own fantasy world of books. She is extremely idealistic and romantic and is constantly searching for the perfect man to sweep in and rescue her from her mediocre life. She cheats on her husband with two men, both of whom she speaks to in the same way with the same phrases and romantic jargon. Flaubert frequently points to the insincerity of her language and the language of everyone around her. This insincerity is largely due to the fact that they express feelings and thoughts in the same overused cliches. We discussed in our class how one of the fundamental flaws of language is our inability to ever say exactly what it is we are trying to say and exactly what it is we mean. Have you ever said something that came out totally wrong? Have you ever groped for some combination of words that could express a feeling so deep or a thought so profound and come up with nothing sufficient? It seems to me that this is something we, as future writing tutors, should really think about. We need to understand that there are some thoughts or feelings that perhaps cannot be accurately summed up with words or language. It makes me wonder whether, in my role as a writing consultant, I can ever really help someone to say what they are trying to say. I guess it all comes down to what we talked about during our first class, communication. We are constantly trying to find ways to communicate what we are thinking or feeling with other people and through writing perhaps we can find ways to bridge the gap between our language and our thoughts. Hopefully we can bridge this gap ourselves and more importantly help other people bridge this gap so that they can learn to convey their thoughts in a sophisticated and educated way. Maybe we will never be able to really say exactly what it is we are trying to say, but that is a challenge we need to take on, rather than settling for crude rhythms that are as empty as they are false.