Renaming James Moffett's article "I, You, and It"

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Perhaps I have not offered Moffett's article enough reflection, but I question the accuracy of its title in regard to what I believe he is actually discussing. I think he is considering less the differences of point of view (I- 1st person, You- 2nd person, and It-3rd person objective or limited or omniscient) and more the differences of distance. His first stage, "inner verbalization," provides no distance, but rather offers language to the experience. I think often of my daughter returning from an evening at the cinema and her eagerness to share the movie's story line with me. "The husband dies and the wife is raising the two children alone in a hovel. She loses her job because her younger daughter has the chicken pox. The landlord tries to evict her but pities her situation and lets her stay if she will clean other tenants' apartments. She meets Mr. Groovy..." My daughter is not using the same vocabulary as that which is used in the movie's dialogue, but she is definitely telling me the story. More accurately, she is telling me and herself the story. She must offer me a “blow by blow” account of events to better understand the storyline as well as better prepare herself to discuss the film with my husband, a moviegoer like herself. The second time she recounts the story line, distance to the details is added. “Dad, you would love this part because she is in love with the landlord’s dog and you like small dogs to a ridiculous degree.” My daughter took little interest in her audience (me) when she was first sharing the story, but as her competence in recounting the chronology is displayed, she is able to pull back and consider her audience (my husband). My daughter allows chronology to give way to analogy. Later, she chats with our next door neighbor, a professor at Gonzaga who teaches film, and starts the conversation with “Matt, you would love this movie I just saw because you love ‘Magnolia’.” Not only is her audience determined immediately, but this time she’s able to make connections to other films. Camille has pulled back so far from this recently viewed film that she can spot similar films in her field of vision. She will eventually chat with her friends about the film and, as Moffett articulates, analogy will give way to tautology. The repetition for my daughter offers clarity. I assume that each time she shares her take on the film, she pulls back further and further, different audiences hear her story and different details surface and different connections are articulated. Not a word is written; however, I see many similarities between this experience and a student’s journey to writing. In fact, I would consider renaming Moffett’s article “Distance and Time” as that is what allowed my daughter’s perception of the film to grow and blossom and they are the two ingredients Moffitt advocates for written discourse for children.

Now I have one child living at home and she has two parents to hear her stories. At school, I have 25 students in one class and only 50 minutes to teach, inspire, and, yes, listen to their takes of the stories we read. Writing must necessarily supplant talking most of the time in order for them all to grow and blossom. A most important concern in Moffett’s article is listening to the story to see if it would best blossom as a poem, a play, a short story, or an essay. But time and distance are necessary for the genre to speak to the student.

Therefore, Dr. Moffett, I wonder if you ever considered renaming your article “Time and Distance”?