Nicholas Lee

Professor Sophia Falvey

ENG 206W

5/12/21

Fill the Time

         In Zadie Smith’s essay “Something to Do”, she explores and discusses her efforts to fill

the newfound extra time she has gained from the COVID-19 pandemic. Smith utilizes a plethora

of literary devices such as similes, parallel syntax, colloquialism, rhetorical questions, and

juxtaposition as she conveys her struggles, realizing that the activities people do serve the same

purpose. In doing so, she reveals that common people and their activities are not so different

from artists or novelists. Smith argues that if their activities are done with “Love”, then an

ordinary person’s activity is indistinguishable from art.

         Smith begins her essay with rhetorical questions and colloquial diction to build her

relationship with the reader. She writes “If you make things, if you are an ‘artist’ of whatever

stripe, at some point you will be asked—or may ask yourself—‘why’ you act, sculpt, paint,

whatever”(16) and poses the question “‘Why I Write’ or ‘Why Write’”(16) as rhetorical

questions, to which she later answers: “it’s something to do.” (16). She begins the process of

inviting a broad audience to share her views and experiences by posing this simple, yet deep

question about an artist’s profession, then providing a simple answer. Smith first introduces her

essay to an exclusive group. Artists, sculptors, actors, painters, and writers are among the few

that she addresses first. However, she then characterizes herself to be more relatable to the

ordinary audience by using more relatable, colloquial diction. After Smith realizes that

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everybody has come to the same conclusion as her, she asks additional rhetorical questions that

are more applicable to everyone. She writes “Why did you bake that banana bread? It was

something to do. Why did you make a fort in your living room? Well, it’s something to do. Why

dress the dog as a cat? It’s something to do, isn’t it? Fills the time” (16). She poses similar

questions as the ones she posed to the exclusive group but uses parallel syntax and colloquial

language as she broadens her audience. Each question Smith asks involves common subjects that

a normal person might recognize, such as “banana bread” or a “fort in the living room.” She then

answers each question with a variant of “it’s something to do”, but each variant uses more

colloquial language. Her first answer is “It was something to do”, which is a formal tone, but her

next answer is “Well, it’s something to do”, switching to a more casual, conversational tone.

Smith’s casual tone is further established with her final answer “It’s something to do, isn’t it?

Fills the time.” She adds an incomplete sentence to her answer, choosing to only include the

predicate clause of a sentence when she adds “Fills the time”, a phrase only seen in conversation,

not in formal writing. At the start of this passage, Smith addresses only other artists and writers

using rhetorical questions that pertain to their plight of why they do their profession. However,

she then expands her range of audience by introducing rhetorical questions that involve everyday

subjects and answering them with colloquial versions of the phrase “it’s something to do”,

establishing a relationship between the reader and herself. By using rhetorical questions and

colloquial diction, Smith puts herself on the same level as her audience and adds a more personal

touch to her essay, removing the barrier that separates her from her audience.

         After establishing a relationship with the reader, Smith then uses similes and repetition

along with the pronoun “we” to describe the reader’s and her difficulties with their use of time

while reiterating that this problem consumes everyone. She writes, “What strikes me at once is

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how conflicted we feel about this new liberty and/or captivity. On the one hand, like pugs who

have been lifted out of a body of water, our little limbs keep pumping on, as they did when we

were hurrying off to our workplaces. Do we know how to stop?” (17). The simile compares both

Smith and the reader to “pugs who have been lifted out of a body of water” with the pronoun

“we”. The pugs represent Smith and the reader as the people who are stuck in quarantine, not

knowing how to stop even when they have been lifted out of the “body of water”, which

represents the work or school one was so used to doing before the quarantine. During the

pandemic, the mass influx of time everyone has gained from the quarantine has left them

confused about what to do. People’s jobs or school lives have suddenly been removed from their

lives, but they do not know how to stop, as Smith describes “our little limbs keep pumping on, as

they did when we were hurrying off to our workplaces.” Smith then describes the various ways

people do “something” to pass the time as she writes “We make banana bread, we sew dresses,

we go for a run, we complete all the levels of Minecraft, we do something, then photograph that

something, and not infrequently put it online” (17). She repetitively uses the pronoun “we” to

show how everyone has different solutions to settle the urge to do something with their extra free

time. Smith mentions the solutions that appeal to different parts of our culture: Minecraft for

gamers, running for athletes, banana bread for bakers, and dresses for tailors through similar

sentence structures. Smith again shows the reader that everybody needs to take up the extra time

they have, and how she suffers from this same problem. She shows the reader that she is not so

different from them through the use of the pronoun “we” in the simile. She includes herself with

her audience as one of their fellow sufferers of the extra time, further exemplifying that she is

just like her audience: fellow artists/writers and regular people.

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         To solve the problem that is consuming everyone, Smith uses symbols, juxtaposition, and

parallel syntax when exploring “Love” as a possible solution to everyone’s obsession with

“something to do”. When she explores the concept that “Love” is a possible solution to the vast

amount of time she has, she realizes that any activity done with “Love” can have a purpose. She

states that “There is no great difference between novels and banana bread. They are both just

something to do. They are no substitute for love…Here is this novel, made with love. Here is this

banana bread, made with love.” (19). Smith juxtaposes the act of writing a novel to baking

banana bread, and it is here that banana bread becomes a symbol for any mundane activity one

might do to pass the time. It represents the “fort in the living room”, “[going] for a run” or “the

levels of Minecraft”, and she asserts that such activities are not that different from writing a

novel. Whether it be to do something to do or to be done with love, each activity remains the

same. Just like she mentions banana bread as a symbol for an activity any regular person might

do, the novel becomes a symbol for the activities an artist does for the sake of “something to do”.

It is the answer to the question of “why [they] act, sculpt, paint, whatever”, but just like the

banana bread, sculpting, acting, or painting all fulfill the same purpose: it is something to do or it

is done with love. To further show the similarities between them, Smith uses parallel syntax

when juxtaposing a novel with banana bread when she states “Here is this novel, made with love.

Here is this banana bread, made with love.” Each sentence follows the same structure, with the

only difference being the noun that is “made with love”, further cementing her stance that there

lies no real difference between the two activities. Using novels and banana bread as symbolic

representations of herself and ordinary people respectively, Smith shows the reader that her

writing activities are not so different from an activity such as making banana bread. Smith also

shares her revelation: that “the most powerful art… is an experience and a going-through; it is

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love comprehended by, expressed and enacted through the artwork itself” (19). The “artwork”

that she mentions can symbolize anything, ranging from her novels to something just as

mundane as baking banana bread, so long as it is done with love. She tells the reader that so long

as you can do something with love, it will have purpose and thus the activity you do will not just

be “something to do”, but rather a fulfilling “experience and a going through”. The “banana

bread, made with love” is just as much a piece of art as a “novel, made with love”; it will not just

be “something to do” but instead be an activity done with a purpose in one’s life.

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 Bibliography

1. Smith, Zadie. Intimations. Penguin, 2020..