Stop the world, I want to get off! Identity and circularity in Gertrude Stein's The World Is Round

Style, Spring, 1996 by Martha Dana Rust

The multi-valency of "of course" in this sentence not only obscures the boundaries of individual "independent" clauses, but also creates an impression that the sentence may roll along forever - propelled by an infinite number of "of course's," each serving simultaneously as the alpha and omega of new "independent" clauses. Thus, even though the sentence ends without an "of course" - "she could cry of course she could cry" - another "of course" rings in our ears, so that we almost hear "she could cry of course she could cry - of course!"

A second way in which the syntax of The World is Round invokes a circle, obliterating the integrity of individual sentences, involves its systematic transgression of the rules for conjoining constituents with "and." A brief explanation of the process of coordinating conjunction will shed light on how the process goes awry in The World is Round. Andrew Radford explains that the process of coordination joins constituents that are grammatically identical (76); thus, coordination may be used to join two or more nouns, two or more verbs, two or more sentences, and so on. Furthermore, when two sentences with identical constituents are joined with "and," certain constituents in the second sentence may be deleted (Radford 77-78). Thus, in the compound sentence "Amy went to the zoo, and Amy saw animals," "Amy" may be deleted from the second sentence to form the sentence "Amy went to the zoo and saw animals."

The "grammar" of The World is Round frequently deviates from both of these rules for conjunction. Its circular grammar allows "and" to join dissimilar sentence constituents; it also allows for movement as well as for deletion of constituents in clauses joined by "and." The following sentence about Rose and one of her dogs, Love, illustrates the rules of conjunction operative in The World is Round:

And(1) when she cried Love cried he(a) lifted up his head and(2) looked up at the sky and(3) he(b) began to cry and(4) he(c) and Rose and Rose and he cried and cried and cried until she stopped and at last her eyes were dried. (11)

In this sentence "and(2)" joins two independent clauses: "he lifted up his head," and "[he] looked up at the sky." In the second clause, "he" is deleted according to the rule that allows for the deletion of an appended sentence's subject noun phrase if it is identical to that of the sentence to which it is joined. So far, then, this sentence complies with the rules for conjunction. "And(3)" joins "[he] looked up at the sky" and "he began to cry." Again, everything here is in order since "and(3)" joins similar constituents, in this case, independent clauses.

But with "and(4)" things begin to go wrong. "And(4)" joins dissimilar sentence constituents: an independent clause, "he began to cry," and a noun, "he." The ordinary rules of conjunction would require a verb phrase to follow "he(c)" so that "and(4)" would join two similar constituents, in this case independent clauses. In this sentence, the verb "cried" is, eventually, linked to "he(c)," but only after another sentence - marked by a new pattern of conjunction, the conjunction of nouns - has begun: "he and Rose and Rose and he cried." In essence, the verb phrase "cried" has been moved to the right of the subject noun phrase of this new sentence. A tree diagram will illustrate the movement of the verb phrase "cried":