"The Author is"

There are text on the screen. The Author is the person who put them there. An author writes on their own behalf even when it is on the behalf of others. All Authors are agents and rhetoric or the spoken word are how they use exercise their agency. The author always acts with an audience in mind, whether it be themselves or imagined. Is the act of self expression the power in itself or is it powerless without the reader?

Hemingway believed the Author is affected by time and space. What an author writes today will be totally different is they wrote it in ten years. In ten years one moves around so much that even if they were to have the same exact experience ten years apart it could hardly be from the same point of view. When an author writes its up to themselves to acknowledge this and address it in their writing or move past it. An author writes with an audience in mind and knows the audience is affected by time and space as well. So the author must do their best in translating the scene into written form to document as best as he can.


The spoken word and written language differ significantly in how they affect their audience. One is heard with the author full intent while the other is read with the audience at the forefront of interpretation. Ong writes about T.S Eliot's perspective on poetry "the point that so far he knows, great love poetry is never written solely for the ear of the beloved, although what a lover speaks with his lips is ofted indeed for the ear of the beloved and of no other" (Ong "Writers Audience" pg 21) to Elliot it seems the audience is just as important as the writers own feelings.  It's important to be honest when we write because when the word is spoken the evidence of our sincerity is in our voice.

Written Language is always written with an audience in mind. As opposed to the spoken word which emotion can flow freely through, written language is used document the specific details about happenings. Its almost like the audience has to exist before the Rhetor address' them with their writing. The Linguistic theorist' John R Searle and John R Austin touch on this, they say the writer needs "in certain instances a special hold on those he addresses", the special hold being the readers interest. So its the writers responsibility to illustrate the scene that already captivates the mind of a particular audience.

The author is as important to the audience as the audience is to the author. There is none with out the other.  Through the author we gain insight and knowledge not found in other forms of art. Through our audience we develop a scope that allows access to the parts of the mind that would be unreachable with out. There is an exchange of power between audience and Author that transcends time and space, as if the author lives on through their words, their ideas seem just as fresh as the moment the committed them to paper.