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Sally Smith
Mrs. Oehrlein
IB English III
15 September 2012
Riveting Writing
In his essay titled, “Why Write,” John Updike expresses that writing is a portal to another
world – a connection between words that make up stories and people. This calling is the reason
why we write. In the first paragraph, Updike compares writing to the task of riveting, setting the
tone for his whole essay. He moves on to personify a pencil and the sheer power a pencil
possesses. He concludes this excerpt by describing the magical effect this had on him as a person
that inspired him to become a writer.
When Updike presents his argument in the first paragraph, he asks a rhetorical question,
which happens to be the title of his essay. Why write? The next question he poses is “why rivet.”
To fully understand the analogy between writing and riveting that Updike presents in the first
paragraph, one must first understand the function of riveting. Riveting is the task of fastening
and connecting two objects, most likely metal, together with a bolt called a rivet. Taking this into
a literary sense, Updike is saying that writing connects to objects together. These objects are
stories and people. In this first paragraph, Updike states that it is this urge for humans to create
stories that people can connect with that drives us to write. He furthers this analogy in the first
paragraph by comparing the pencil to a riveting gun. As a riveting gun is the tool that riveters use
to connect two objects together, the pencil is the tool that writers use to connect us humans with
a riveting (no pun intended) tale.
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In his next paragraph, Updike furthers his characterization of a pencil through the use of
personification. The “quiet, nimble, slender and then stubby wonder-worker” can create anything
the writer has to imagine, because anything is at his disposal when putting the pencil to paper.
This idea of being able to create without limitations, to imagine and then bring to life “a palace at
no cost” is what draws ordinary people to become writers. This feeling of empowerment that
writing gives them to connect the real and the unreal, the rational and the irrational, lures writers
in. It is ironic how Updike uses personification in his assertion that words connect humans and
stories. Personification is literally giving human-like characteristics to inanimate objects – giving
them similar actions connects the two together.
Updike concludes his philosophy one why people write with his own personal
experiences. He flashes back to when he was a little, “rapturous” child drawing, writing, and
overall being captured by the enchanting spell this art held over him. Updike creates a sense of a
circular ending by asking another rhetorical question, like he began. He asks the reader what
caused his excitement, what is this thing that is so unknown and intangible, yet alive to him.
Updike answers this question for us, with a kind of hazy mystical answer. He says that although
the child doesn’t know it yet, he is gripped by “two philosophical perceptions.” These are the
perceptions that writing connects: humans and stories.
Updike, in his essay, comments that writing is a gateway that humans can enter through
to experience a whole other world, and that is the driving force behind why people write. He
compares the act of writing to the act of riveting. He also personifies how writing can be brought
to life, almost ironically. And he sums it all up by sharing his own personal experiences with
writing.