Active vs. Passive Voice

 

Active vs. Passive Voice Instruction

In “The Bet,” Anton Chekov usually uses the active voice, but he moves to the passive voice more frequently after the lawyer becomes a prisoner. The passive voice emphasizes the lawyer’s decreased ability to act for himself. Watch how the lawyer's actions give way to passivity in the folowing paragraph, culminating at the end with a shift from active to passive voice.

In the second year the piano was silent in the lodge, and the prisoner asked only for the classics. In the fifth year music was audible again, and the prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched him through the window said that all that year he spent doing nothing but eating and drinking and lying on his bed, frequently yawning and talking angrily to himself. He did not read books. Sometimes at night he would sit down to write; he would spend hours writing and in the morning tear up all that he had written. More than once he could be heard crying.

How many verbs are passive?

 

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” BIG HINT : To check for passive voice, insert the word by after the verb: “More than once he could be heard crying” by the guards. If you can include a subject (the guards), you have passive voice. The other instances in which you see a form of the verb be are simply states of being. Try inserting the word by after the verb and you will see that you cannot include a subject.



References

Chekov, Anton. “The Bet.” Elements of Literature. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003. 221.