Babble On

by Anne White

Near the end of C. S. Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength, the speeches being given at a college banquet turn into word salad (“Tidies and fugleman—I sheel foor that we all—er—most steeply rebut the defensible, though, I trust, lavatory…”). If you haven’t read the book, the explanation is both complicated and simple: the wizard Merlin, resurrected for the occasion, has been interfering. This is what happens next:

[Merlin] had left the dining room as soon as the curse of Babel was well fixed upon the enemies. No one had seen him go. Wither had once heard his voice calling loud and intolerably glad above the riot of nonsense, "Qui Verbum Dei contempserunt, eis auferetur etiam verbum hominis."

The translation of the Latin is given in a footnote: "They that have despised the word of God, from them shall the word of man also be taken away."

We can turn that around, and say that to love and revere the Word of God, we must also revere the “word of man.” That does not mean “the wisdom of this world [which] is foolishness with God” (1 Cor. 3:19), but rather something sacred and profound: God’s gift of language. The curse of Babel was that people lost their ability to communicate with each other; so its reverse is to be able to speak, to understand, to share meaning and metaphor, to instruct, to exhort, to tell stories, to make jokes. Think of the talking animals in Narnia. Think of what happens to Ginger the Cat in Lewis’s The Last Battle, when he loses that privilege.

“Look, look!” said the voice of the Bear. “It can’t talk. It has forgotten how to talk!...” And then the greatest terror of all fell upon those Narnians. For every one of them had been taught—when it was only a chick or a puppy or a cub—how Aslan at the beginning of the world had turned the beasts of Narnia into Talking Beasts and warned them that if they weren’t good they might one day be turned back again…”And now it is coming upon us,” they moaned.

How do we keep this gift and not lose it? And how do we teach the children under our care to cherish and not to despise it?

We talk to them. We sing to them. We read to them, repeat, repeat. Most of us reading this, know this. It is good  to read books full of strong and deep language; but (as in our music and art studies), we may also need to provide specific work on technique. And, in a time when the “curse of Babel” threatens civilization, we may need to go even further not only to protect our own walls, but to venture out in the spirit of those who go out carrying  tools to rebuild storm-flattened houses. Educator Marva Collins, always a proponent of word study in the classroom, wrote about a vocabulary “weapon” that she found; and tells us, as she told her students, why it really mattered.

That fall I discovered a secret weapon for building vocabulary, a book called Vocabulary for the College-Bound Student [by Harold Levine]. I ordered copies for all the students in Westside Prep. 

“Words are ideas. They make up thoughts. If our words are limited, our thoughts are limited,” I said, holding up the book and pointing to its title. “You see what this says? It says for the college-bound student, not the failure-bound student. To succeed in life, you must be a thinker, and to be a thinker, you must have vocabulary.” (Marva Collins’ Way, p. 170)

The introduction to Vocabulary for the College-Bound Student (available online) echoes the military, “secret weapon” analogy:

Though reading is the basic means of vocabulary growth, it is a relatively slow means. For the college-bound student who has not achieved a superior vocabulary, reading needs to be supplemented by a direct attack that will yield comparatively rapid growth—and that is the purpose of this book.

We may not require Harold Levine’s help in building our own vocabulary, but we could do worse than spread some of that curiosity and delight in words, and, in consequence, the ability to use them to think, to write, and to share dreams. Weapons or tools, whichever idea works better for us—the important thing is to develop skill in their use, and also care and respect for them, so that we will never be forced to rebut the defensible, though, I trust, lavatory.

[Aslan] said, “Rise up, Sir Peter Wolf’s-Bane. And,  whatever happens, never forget to wipe your sword.” (C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe)