A special case of repeating a word, a repeated
preposition separates what otherwise would be the many objects of one
preposition, emphasizing that they are more separate than joined. It also
throws more emphasis on the preposition.
No longer do our lives depend upon the soil, the sun,
the rain, or the wind; we live by the grace of jobs and by
the brutal logic of jobs.
In the first series, the emphasis goes to the objects
soil, sun, rain, and wind, while upon is forgotten.
In the second, by pulls the emphasis to by the grace
of jobs and by the brutal logic of jobs.
Much more could be said in amplification, in qualification,
and in argument.
To the storyteller we turn for entertainment, for
mental excitement of the simplest kind, for emotional participation,
for the pleasure of traveling in some remote region in space
or time.
She has an instinctive politician's gift of connecting—to
women, to men, to old people, to teenagers,
to the guy in the Staten Island deli who took her order the
other weekend after she finished a five-mile run.
