Gonna be famous 5eva – ’cause 4eva’s too short
Gonna be famous 3gether – ’cause that’s one more than 2gether!
(from “Girls 5eva” on Peacock)
As I’ve been writing about alliteration, personification, onomatopoeia, and the like, I’ve repeatedly thought about a post committed to the use of numbers and letters as a literary device. Obviously most writing uses letters, and it’s not unusual for poems or prose to discuss numbers – but that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the methodical shaping of a written piece around specific numbers or letters in a particular order.
The problem is that I’m not aware of many stories or poems which do this. The novel Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (2001) revolves around the gradual loss of letters in a small island nation and the resulting rhetorical contortions necessary to communicate with fewer and fewer options. Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright (1939) doesn’t use the letter ‘e’ at all, although the plot itself isn’t about letters per se – it’s merely an exercise in rhetorical contortions.
Alphabet poems are a thing – a short work in which each word or line begins with successive letters of the alphabet. Lots of kids books or poems focus on learning letters Sesame Street-style, which I suppose should also count.
But it’s in popular music and popular musicals that the use of numbers or letters as rhetorical tools really shines. While I’m not certain I can justify it in the context of official ELA curriculums, it’s nevertheless an example of colorful uses of language and creative writing which seems worth a gander – so here we are.
The title track of the musical Six has this self-affirming celebratory chorus (emphases added):
We’re ONE of a kind – no category
TOO many years trapped in his story
We’re FREE to take our crowning glory
FOR FIVE more minutes… we’re SIX!
It doesn’t even matter that “free” isn’t actually a number – the overlapping “three” is implied by context. The use of numbers here is mostly just catchy, but the theme of “six” is used to suggest unity among the women on stage throughout the production. If we really want to go crazy with the analysis, we could also argue that counting UP to that total emphasizes the sense of growth or improvement inherent in such solidarity.
If we wanted to go all crazy with the analysis, that is.
Numbers can also emphasize separation or distance. Here’s the most recognizable bit from “One is the Loneliest Number” (as covered by Three Dog Night in the late 1960s):
One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do
Two can be as bad as one – it’s the loneliest number since the number one…
One is the loneliest number – even worse than two
Not overly complicated at first glance, but still surprisingly poignant.
There’s a different sort of separation (with less melancholy) in “A Minute Without You” by Hanson:
’Cause when the minutes seem like hours, and the hours seem like days
Then a week goes by – you know it takes my breath away
All the minutes in the world could never take your place
There’s one thousand four hundred forty hours in my day.
Or a similar idea on a grander scale in “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent:
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights – in sunsets – in midnights – in cups of coffee
In inches – in miles – in laughter – in strife
In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life?
In these examples, the focus on numbers helps bring perspective to the emotions and experiences being communicated. It’s not a mathematical issue as such – there are no trains leaving various cities at different speeds – but the idea that “two can be as bad as one” brings pathos to the story of a struggling relationship in a way that trying to spell out the details probably couldn’t. Counting the minutes someone is away in such a literal fashion is a creative twist on “climbing every mountain” or “swimming every sea” by way of expressing desire. And breaking an entire year into minutes for purposes of discussing life’s true meaning is a brutally gentle reminder of just how mortal each and every one of us truly are and how dangerous it is to judge others and how they choose to use their own precious time.
Plus, it’s all poetic and stuff – which is pretty important as well.
There are other ways to use lists and numbers, of course. No one from my generation can forget the Violent Femmes working their way through the most angst-ridden list of the entire 1980s:
You can all just kiss off into the air – behind my back I can see them stare
They’ll hurt me bad, but I won’t mind – they’ll hurt me bad, they do it all the time…
I take one – one – one ’cause you left me
And two – two – two for my family
And three – three – three for my heartache
And four – four – four for my headaches
And five – five – five for my lonely
And six – six – six for my sorrow
And seven – s-s-s-seven for no tomorrow
And eight – eight – I forget was eight was for
But nine – nine – nine for a lost god
Ten – Ten – TEN -TEN – EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING
Here, the numbering acts as a hook of sorts (the chanting of each digit practically requires us to sing along even when we keep messing up the rest of the words) while driving home the idea that the problems faced by the singer are so overwhelming as to require actually listing them out. As if that’s not enough, he’s apparently self-medicating in response. (We’re all certain THAT made everything better.)
The musical Hamilton uses a similarly pragmatic structure for “Ten Duel Commandments”:
Number one! The challenge, demand satisfaction – if they apologize, no need for further action
Number two! If they don’t, grab a friend – that’s your second – your lieutenant when there’s reckoning to be reckoned
Number three! Have your seconds meet face to face – negotiate a peace, or negotiate a time and place
This is commonplace, especially ’tween recruits – most disputes die and no one shoots
Number four! If they don’t reach a peace, that’s alright – time to get some pistols and a doctor on site…
Why this structure? In this context, the most obvious reason is that it reflects the “counting to ten” ritual associated with dueling in this period. That’s important for several reasons, not least of which is that later in the story, someone will die when his opponent cheats and fires early. The list format also emphasizes the entrenched norms of the practice. These “commandments” were more than just traditions, or even laws – they were part of a “code” required of anyone hoping to retain a degree of social or political legitimacy. Given that our main character will eventually die in a very similar duel, stuff like that matters a great deal.
As with any literary device, of course, sometimes numbers or letters are simply used to make things more interesting. Here’s a bit from “Mathematics” by Mos Def (emphases added):
Yo, check it ONE for Charlie Hustle, TWO for Steady Rock,
THREE for the FORTH-coming live future shock
It’s FIVE dimensions, SIX senses
SEVEN firmaments of Heaven to Hell, EIGHT million stories to tell
NINE planets faithfully keep in orbit, with the probable TENTH, the universe expands length…
It’s a number game but **** don’t add up somehow
Like I got SIXTEEN to THIRTY-TWO bars to rock it
But only FIFTEEN percent of profits, ever see my pockets like
SIXTY-NINE billion in the last TWENTY years
Spent on national defense but folks still live in fear like
Nearly HALF of America’s largest cities is ONE-QUARTER Black
That’s why they gave Ricky Ross all the crack
SIXTEEN ounces to a pound, TWENTY more to a key
A FIVE minute sentence hearing and you no longer free…
You get the idea. The numbers serve as an anchoring device but also allow the writer to show off a bit. The lyrics are poignant but still entertaining, and the numbers are a big part of that.
Letters can serve as a creative structural device as well. Usually, of course, we associate this with kids’ songs:
M – I – C… See ya’ real soon!
K – E – Y… Why? Because we like you!
M – O – U – S – E …
That association can be utilized to drive home very different messages as well. From pop artist Gayle:
I was into you, but I’m over it now – and I was tryin’ to be nice
But nothing’s getting through, so let me spell it out:
A B C D E F U
And your mom, and your sister, and your job, and your broke-*** car, and that **** you call art…
F U and your friends that I’ll never see again – everybody but your dog, you can all **** off
Over a half-century before, Tammy Wynette spelled out a few things for slightly different (but nevertheless related) reasons in a song just as shocking for its time:
Our little boy is four years old and quite a little man
So we spell out the words we don’t want him to understand
Like T-O-Y or maybe S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E
But the words we’re hiding from him now tear the heart right out of me
Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today
Me and little J-O-E will be going away
I love you both and this will be pure H-E double L for me
Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E
For Gayle, the spelling (such as it is) is used to chide her ex, who’s apparently being rather clueless and immature about how “broken up” works. For Wynette, the spelling is intended to protect an actual child who’s about to experience his parents’ separation. In both cases, the emotions and other dynamics of the situation are emphasized and explored through creative use of letters.
My favorite example, by far, however, is from the Matilda musical on Netflix (adapted from the Broadway show of the same name). It’s a number called “School Song” and requires extensive quoting in order to fully appreciate:
And so you think you’re able to survive this mess by being
A prince or a princess, you will soon see there’s no escaping tragedy
And even if you put in heaps of effort, you’re just wasting energy
’Cause your life as you know it is ancient history
I have suffered in this jail – I’ve been trapped inside the cage for ages – this living hell
But if I try I can remember – back before my life had ended
Before my happy days were over – before I first heard the pealing of the bell
Like you, I was curious – so innocent, I asked a thousand questions
But unless you want to suffer, listen up and I will teach you a thing or two
You listen here, my dear – you’ll be punished so severely if you step out of line
And if you cry it will be double, you should stay out of trouble and remember to be extremely careful
(Why?) Why? Did you hear what we said? Just you wait for phys-ed!
(What’s phys-ed?) Physical education – the Trunchbull speciality
(Who are you?) We’re prefects – we’re here to take you to class
(So we’re going to start learning?) Oh, you’ll start learning alright
(Great – I already know the alphabet) You don’t know the alphabet until you’ve learned the alphabet…
And the bulk of the song then repeats. This time, however, the alphabet itself is emphasized visually so that it suddenly leaps out at us from the exact same words we’ve just heard without realizing it was there all along:
And so you think you’re A-ble to survive this mess by B-ing
A prince or a princess, you will soon C there’s no escaping trage-D
And E-ven if you put in heaps of F-ort, you’re just wasting ener-G
’Cause your life as you know it is H-ient history
And so forth. It’s bloody brilliant, and more importantly, it reflects the underlying conflict of the story – the school which Matilda and the others are required to attend (where kids should be learning things like the alphabet) is instead something of a torture chamber. The two are inextricably woven together, but the relationship is not immediately obvious – just like the underlying structure of the song describing it.
In other words, the use of letters in this case is certainly clever, but that’s not enough – it serves the theme of the story or song. In that sense, numbers and letters can function much like any other literary device. The fact that they’re not technically classified as such troubles me about a -1 on a scale of 1-10.