All writing is political. No matter the genre, no matter how much it takes itself seriously or not, all language has a set of beliefs, assumptions, and politics that inform it. All writing says something about the world, about human nature, about the lives of our characters. That’s why we can take something like Fifty Shades of Grey and discuss its worldview. It was fan fiction, sure. It’s erotica, mhmm. It’s not really “high” literature, so do its themes really matter in the grand scheme of things? I would argue yes. Of course. It still has an audience, and inside its pages, it still says something about BDSM relationships, about power and money, about toxicity and abuse. It cannot escape the reality of its themes, even if it is 70% raunchy sex. (Totally made up percentage, by the way). It could have been fully pornographic—100% sexy times—and it still would have a point of view, a set of politics, a theme. All writing is political. All writing has themes.
And theme is King. In my world, at least.
Actually, fuck that. Let’s make it femme. Theme is Queen. Rhymes better anyhow.
In creative writing, we develop those themes through a variety of different avenues. At the moment, the biggest divide seems to be Team Save the Cat or Team Story Genius: are you a more beat-sheet, plot-oriented, get-those-characters-an-archetype-damn-it kind of writer; or are you a more interior-monologue, heavy-flash-back, make-that-character-a-fully-realized-human-being kind of writer? At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which you are. Either way, Theme is Queen. Your plot or your character arcs inevitably will say SOMETHING about human existence.
Something that matters to your readers.
Hard Sci Fi will explore the ripple effects of our current techno-social politics well into the future. Fantastical assassins who take down the tyrannical monarchies will explore the corruption of power and the way we value individual badassery. Introspective romances will explore what intimacy means in the face of trauma or how it withers at the hands of miscommunication. Young Adult contemporaries will explore the way Gen-Z navigates their own identities in the face of a crumbling, potentially non-existent future. You can have a skeletal plot or a lush introspection—either way, it’s going to say something. It’s gonna have themes.
Stories are escapism. They’re entertainment. But they’re also how we process our own existence. Human beings have always told stories, and we always will. Because stories have meaning.
Okay, so how does all of this relate to synthesis?
Just as writers need to pay special attention to themes, students of English / literary scholars need to pay special attention to synthesis. It’s the call and response of literature. Writers = Call. Academic Readers = Response. Writers say something about the world. Academic Readers say what that is and why it matters.
If observation is the what and analysis is the what it means, synthesis is the why we should care about that meaning.
Synthesis is the so what,
the why bother.
We care about what Fifty Shades Of Grey says about Christian Grey’s relationship with Anastasia Steele because its dominance is built on an exploitation of power, and its submission is built on abuse. We do not see a mutual respect, an exercise in consent and boundaries. Instead, we see only Christian repeatedly crossing Anastasia’s lines in the sand and coercing her into what he wants. When you have an audience as wide as this book’s thinking that the toxicity in their relationship is something to yearn for, well…. The Call was problematic. But on a positive note, the Response was actually pretty great. Because of its popularity, people did take the time to explore what Fifty Shades was saying and why maybe we shouldn’t fully listen to it. The result was a moment for BDSM culture to explain what a healthy dom/sub relationship looks like, and we had another woke moment to look at how insidious toxic masculinity can be—and how we can even, at times, yearn for it.
All of that is synthesis. The we care because…
It is worth noting that synthesis doesn’t have to be a judgment. In fact, usually it shouldn’t be a judgment. The role of literary critic is not to be a gate keeper: “this is high art, this is low; this is worth reading, this isn’t; this is super woke, this is a hot dumpster fire.” Some of that might happen along the way, but the role of literary critic is to unearth the themes of a work, lay them bare, and say, “hey, let’s talk about this.” In other words, it’s not a societal push back, it’s not cancel culture—it’s simply the exploration of Fifty Shades’s meaning.
So let’s talk about “Moonflowers.”
I’m tempted to just cut to the chase, but for the sake of parallelism, I’m going to copy and paste our observations and our analyses again, and this time, we’ll say why these effects matter in the grand scheme of May’s poem. I’ll also clump them together so we can see the sort of body paragraph structure we might have used in an English paper. All the way up through grad school, this is how I’d organize my notes before writing a paper. I’d throw all of my observations in a document, clump them together under an all caps header, and then I’d analyze in the actual draft. So again, if you are a student right now, try this out and see if it helps you!
YOUTH
Uses similes more than metaphors: like a sail, as though it screams, almost the way a newborn screams, like Christmas lights
• Similes generally are a more elementary form of comparison than metaphor. They’re how we first explore figurative language. In other words, they’re younger, more inexperienced. They also are less committed to the comparison. If you say “The petals are sails” or the buds “are christmas lights,” it’s more definitive than hedging with “like” or “almost the way.” The similes here are more indecisive, just as the blooms themselves seem to be indecisive (“until the bloom decides, / or seems to decide, the tease is over.”)
Christmas language: flowers strung along the vine like christmas lights, one not yet lit; praise the world
• Christmas also has an association with youth and innocence—the birth of Jesus, the promise of his life to come. But also because it’s so close to the winter solstice, it has a turning of the cycles vibe to it, a rebirth in cold and darkness.
Newborn language: screams, pain, want, cold, cry, shout
• Emphasis on youth, innocence, but also the pain and fear that comes with it. Everything is new to a newborn. Everything is literally the worst thing they’ve experienced
Synthesis:
The moonflowers are personified as youthful in order to draw a parallel with the speaker’s daughter–budding in youth, about to bloom into adulthood.
BECOMING IS UNDOING (AND THE VIOLENCE THAT ENTAILS)
Flower language: unclench themselves, unlocks itself from itself, throws its petals backward like a sail in the wind, is to break
• Of note, May uses “Un-“ in his verbs here, and a “backwards”-ness. Becoming is undoing. It’s shedding the clench and the locks and unfurling itself into the forces (re: “wind”) of the world—harnessing them for one’s self. [This one gets dangerously close to an actual thesis, which means it’s very close to synthesis.]
Repetition of “and” instead of standard list form: almost the way a newborn screams AND pain AND want AND cold AND still I hear that cry
• Both slows down that first sentence + makes each item feel more overwhelming to the newborn (and the speaker)
Newborn language: screams, pain, want, cold, cry, shout
• Emphasis on youth, innocence, but also the pain and fear that comes with it. Everything is new to a newborn. Everything is literally the worst thing they’ve experienced
Violent language: scream, pain, cry, shout, throws, breaks, wound (double entendre)
• The act of becoming through undoing is painful. Change is painful. [Again, very close to synthesis here]
Other interesting language: linger, tease, suddenness; wound; husks
• Lingering/teasing we’ve sort of explored with the slow creep of change, the indecisiveness, how drawn out that first sentence is.
• I find “watching the wound husks / of moonflowers unclench themselves” really fascinating because of the double entendre of “wound.” If you read it another way, it’s an injury instead of something tangled, which parallels with the painful language we get later on; husk also has an age connotation to it, a desiccated vibe that stands in sharp contrast to the youth we see throughout—but it also has an outer shell / protective layer to it. A lot of meaning packed into two short words.
Synthesis:
The connotative language asserts that the transition from youth to adulthood is a painful, terrifying exercise in shedding one’s previous existence.
LOOKING AS POWER
Looking language: by making others see what we see; watching, notice only when you look away and back; ends with her turning to look at me.
• Looking/seeing is a form of praise to these two characters—as we’re told—but also a form of power. They make others see what they see, together, in first person plural (“we”). When his daughter turns that gaze against him, separately from him—no longer a “we” but a “her”—it is just as startling as that short sentence is. She’s accepted her own power as her own person through sight.
Even though in first person, uses second person (you): you notice only when you look away and back
• Second language is usually reserved for universal experiences. If I say you can see this thing, I’m rather certain that you can—that it isn’t just me seeing it. There’s some sort of universality about how subtly this change from unbloomed to bloomed is for these moonflowers.
Synthesis:
The moment his daughter becomes is when she accepts her own powerful personhood by directing her sight at her father, separate from the collective “we.”
JUXTAPOSITION OF LENGTH
Despite it being in verse (aka, not prose, or not in paragraph form), May uses normal punctuation. There are commas and dashes at the ends of lines, and there are periods. In total, there are only five sentences. The first is the largest of them all. They get shorter as he goes.
• The long, slow sentence mimics the gentle creeping of moonflowers blooming (“you only notice when you look away and back”)
• The short sentence at the end is startling in opposition to the creeping one. It mimics the “suddenness”—the change the speaker notes in the blooming
Tons of prepositional phrases: AT dusk, BY the fence, AROUND the garden, etc.
• Prepositional phrases situate us, sure, but they slow down the reader. One of my biggest edits is to cut down prepositional strings to 2-3 max, otherwise it starts to feel cumbersome in the mouth. May uses these to slow down that first sentence.
Lots of hedging and filtering: slowly, almost too slow for us to see their moving; you notice only when you look away and back; until the bloom decides, or seems to decide.
• Again, slowing down that first sentence, making it feel less definitive/decisive
Clauses stacked one right after the other—extends that first sentence so it’s longer
• Slowing down that first sentence
Later sentences are shorter and closer to fragments: so now she points; and then she turns
• Adds to the startling vibe of the end
Synthesis:
By teasing us through the long, creeping first sentence, May shows us how slowly change starts and then how suddenly it bursts forth. When his daughter looks at him, she looks at us, and because that sentence is so short in comparison to the first sentence, we find her sudden growth into adulthood startling.
the meaning of moonflowers
If you add up all the syntheses, all the “why the effects of this particular language matters,” you get the meaning of the poem. You get its true content. If you remember, I made the assertion in the observation blog post that a sentence functions threefold: its syntax, its connotations, and its content. What we’ve done is explored how the first two add up to the third.
“Moonflowers” is about a father and a daughter watching moonflowers bloom.
Yes. But.
It’s really about a father watching his daughter bloom.
Something we haven’t talked about yet but should is why May chose a moonflower to begin with. Why isn’t his daughter a lily or a rose or a sunflower? The answer to that is partly why I chose this poem, since I, of course, am a witchy sort of writer. The moon is feminine. As a symbol, it evokes the lunar cycle of menstruation—coming every four weeks. And menstruation, we all know, is generally the sign of a girl’s maturation into womanhood. The speaker’s daughter is not a sunflower because she’s not associated with the sun. She’s the moon. She’s bloomed full.
Read those syntheses again–just them, without the obs / an that came before. You’ll see the entire meaning of the poem in a series of concluding sentences to our would-be body paragraphs. It is the road map of how to read the meaning of “Moonflowers.”
But we didn’t just decide this meaning out of nowhere.
The language led us here.
We observed the interesting syntax and connotations, we analyzed what effects those have, and we came to our conclusions based on that evidentiary work. We noticed the innocence and the slow tease of growth, the sudden pain of change, and the moment when the daughter startles us by becoming her own person.
The text spoke, and we listened.
What can we take way from this as creative writers?
I would argue that creative writers need to pay special attention to the themes of their works in progress—to hone exactly what your work is saying about the world. When I wrote The Moon Tells No Lies, my goals were not lofty. I’d experience rejection and just wanted to write something for me, which means I set out to write a total #fallfeels vibe solely because I’ve got a little halloween heart. I honestly didn’t even plan to put a lot of effort into it because no one was ever going to read it but me.
But as I was developing my story, I read what autumn was really saying, what it meant: the time when life and death shake hands and trade places.
Because I noticed those themes pushing and pulling at my world, I decided to infuse them in every aspect of my story—particularly in my portrayals of motherhood. I purposefully explored the intermingling of life and death in different experiences of female identity (Maiden, Mother, Crone) and of parenthood, which even led me to title a birthing chapter, “The Cries of Life and Death Come from the Same Trumpet.”
As a reader, I unearthed my meaning, laid it bare, and said, “let’s talk about this,” and then I planted that meaning more purposefully as a writer. And my story was better for it. It made me realize that even though Moon started out as nothing more than my fall feels Pinterest board come to life, it had something to say about the world—which meant that it might mean something to readers other than myself.
But again, in order to get there, I had to notice what themes were already tangled in my words. I had to read my own manuscript as a reader, not a writer. And then ultimately be both.
When we sit down to edit our work, that’s the advice, right?
Read it as a reader, experience it from the other side of the fence–just as we’ve experienced other people’s work. What that really means is we must engage in the cognitive dissonance that is holding both the Call and the Response in our heads at the same exact moment.
Sheesh, that’s an ask.
But if you practice observation, analysis, and synthesis, you’ll have an easier time actively listening to your text. You’ll be able to read your themes and then make decisions, going forward, about whether or not you like what exactly they’re saying—and then how to either change them if you don’t or really hit them home if you do.
Theme is Queen, my friend. Theme is Queen.
