As Havelock, Ong, and others have pointed out, amplification is clearly a virtue in an oral culture, providing redundancy of information, ceremonial amplitude, and scope for memorable syntax and diction. Everything about the Veneerings was spick and span new. When I give I give myself. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. My fathers can have it.
Analogies decide nothing, that is true, but they can make one feel more at home.
History is to the nation rather as memory is to the individual. As an individual deprived of memory becomes disoriented and lost, not knowing where he has been or where he is going, so a nation denied a conception of its past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future. Harrison Ford is like one of those sports cars that advertise acceleration from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in three or four seconds. He can go from slightly broody inaction to ferocious reaction in approximately the same time span. And he handles the tight turns and corkscrew twists of a suspense story without losing his balance or leaving skid marks on the film.