Where Words Can Go

It is not true that life is one thing and philosophy another, that what’s obviously going on is what’s real and that what subtleties we see are just the result of thinking too hard about nothing at all. The truth, instead, is that the purpose of an art, the art of writing included, is to help us see what we don’t ordinarily see in our common, active life. To do that, the arts rely on each their own body of materials and techniques—understanding which, our appreciation and pleasure grow.

In John Steinbeck’s short story Flight, there is an exchange between a young brother and sister about their older brother’s suddenly leaving home. What is of interest here, both grammatically and literarily, is how the two speakers refer to their brother’s going away:

“We will have no breakfast,” said Emilio. “Mama will not want to cook.” Rosy did not answer him. “Where is Pepé gone?” he asked. Rosy looked around at him. She drew her knowledge from the quiet air. “He has gone on a journey. He will never come back.”

The objective grammatical difference between the verb constructions of Emilio’s is gone and Rosy’s has gone is straightforward enough to understand. We recognize gone as the past participle of the verb go, and when a past participle is used with a present auxiliary verb, the two together form the present perfect tense. Modern, contemporary English has fixed the rule more tightly and now requires that the auxiliary verb always be some form of have, as we would today regularly write, for example, has come, or as I just wrote earlier in this same sentence, has fixed. Rosy, in replying to Emilio that their brother has gone on a journey is in keeping with the contemporary construction we are all familiar with.

But how are we to understand the unconventional way Emilio posed his question? He does not ask, “Where has Pepé gone?” but “Where is Pepé gone?” The auxiliary verb, in other words, does not conform to the standard rule, and there is both a grammatical observation and literary conjecture to make about that. The verb go is intransitive; it denotes action, a movement, that is not directed at anything, but rather stays within the subject itself. We do not speak of going something, for example, in the way in which we would speak of saying something or eating something. These two verbs have an object (something) to which their action is directed, and we call such verbs transitive. Intransitive verbs do not have an object, transitive verbs do.

Now it used to be the case in English that intransitive verbs in the perfect tenses did in fact employ forms of the verb be (Emilio’s is) as an auxiliary with intransitive verbs, limiting the use of the auxiliary have (Rosy’s has) to transitive verbs. Nowadays we require have with both transitive and intransitive verbs, and so Emilio’s construction strikes us as a bit odd. But what is the literary result of that anachronistic use? It could be that Steinbeck simply wanted to portray the unpolished language of a young boy to mark his ineducation or naivete. But it could be too that such innocence, grammatical and personal both, played hand in glove for Steinbeck in making a larger philosophical comment about the world these siblings’ older brother had disappeared to.

For the result of using a form of the verb be as an auxiliary, if it’s not just a solecism, is to emphasize the present circumstance of the departed brother, his state at the moment and not just the action of leaving he recently performed. Emilio’s question, “Where is Pepé gone,” is ambiguously constructed: we can understand the verb is as that earlier auxiliary to the principal verb go in its present perfect tense, or we can read it as the principal verb in the simple present tense with gone as a predicate adjective. Is the boy in his innocence and insight asking where his brother, having gone, is now in his thoughts, or is he just asking with mistaken grammar where his brother has gone? That is to say, is he thinking about his brother’s present state of being, even the state of his soul, or is he merely curious about the direction of his travel and his geographical location?

That obliquity is rich, and it rises, accidentally or not, as a veil to be pierced when we read for more than merely what appears on the surface of the narrative. Emilio’s language makes us wonder what kind of journey his brother has really undertaken, and whether it might not be a journey of an unaccustomed kind.

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