ESSAY: How

By Alexis Kueny, grade 8

Through history, words, especially written ones, have shaped civilizations. Culture, science,
politics, social interactions all rely on words. After words came books. Since Guttenberg’s printing
press invention, books became easier to make and helped ideas spread faster. The whole process
helped human race to evolve during the few last centuries.

There are several types of words. First, there are beneficial writings that provide useful
information such as on how people lived in the past, on important discoveries, science or math
formulas. Thanks to such accumulated knowledge, our living standards have improved tremendously,
especially since Industrial revolution. Beneficial writings also contain progressive ideas such as those
of Siècle des lumieres philosophers Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot. They wrote about social issues, for
example slavery in America, which they shared with other readers. They helped to open libraries so
that proletariat could come and read their works. Their works inspired the Universal Human Rights
declaration and the French revolution against monarchy.

There is another type of writing: harmful one. Harmful writing may be found in fake news or
propaganda. This type is as old as beneficial writing. It is used to tell lies to people and make them
hate each other. For example, in Nazi Germany, antisemitist books were published, anti-Jewish articles
were found routinely in newspapers, and movies encouraging racism were released. Consequently,
people thought that Jews were inhuman and started denouncing Jews to Nazi officials. During Cold
War, the East Bloc countries (communist countries such as USSR, Poland, Romania…) population was
heavily targeted with propaganda. These countries’ governments encouraged writers to glorify
communism in their works and forbade any critical writing. Books from Western Bloc (capitalist
countries such as USA, France or England) were seldom published. Some were censored or edited by
the governments. In this way the regime made sure no one would question it. Today, many people
rely on news on social media instead of reading the newspapers. In this type of media, fake news can
spread quickly and even become viral. Recently, presidential candidates used fake news to gain
support. Even more dangerously, terrorist groups use online propaganda for recruitment purpose.

In The Book Thief, Max writes a story for Liesel named The Word Shaker. It is a story about a
man (the Fuhrer) who seeks power. To achieve this, he plants seeds wich grow into a forest of bad
words. When the forest has fully grown, the Fuhrer distributes the words to the people who then
become hypnotized by them. However, his forest needs to be maintained so the Fuhrer recruits “word
shakers”. They have to climb the trees and collect words for the Fuhrer. The best word shakers were
those who understood the power of words. They were able to climb higher than all the others. One
such word shaker is a small girl. She is renowned as the best word shaker of the region because she
knows how powerless a person could be without words. One day, she meets a man despised by her
homeland and they became good friends. When the man gets sick, she allows a single tear to fall from
her eye. The tear is in fact a seed of a good word: friendship. When the seed dries, she plants it among
other trees and wateres it until it becomes a big strong tree of good words. It is higher than all the
others and everyone is amazed except the Fuhrer. The Fuhrer orders his soldiers to cut the tree, but
with no success. The morale of this story is that harmful words can only be confronted with positive
message, in order to win.
 As a conclusion, words are the most powerful tool there is. It can change the human nature
and, hence the course of history for good or bad. With this regard, education and spread of knowledge
are of paramount importance.