A Strong Passive Voice

In these terrible times of grief and destruction, can we spare a moment to talk about the passive voice?

I have read more nonsense in books on writing about the need to avoid, at all cost, any major use of the passive voice. This counsel offers a core of truth, in that using the passive without discrimination can reduce the force of prose, but it also shrugs aside legitimate functions of the passive that can make prose efficient and smoothly readable.

Consider, for example, a paragraph in which unity and clarity depend on the use of a consistent subject:

"As a child, I was terrified by beets. If I met them on the road, I ducked into black alleys to avoid them; if I saw them on the trees, I dove into storm drains to hide myself in the muck. I was victimized in every possible way by crippling fears, and I knew these fears in the purpled forms of beets."

Another example:

"The clay squid haunted my family for generations. It brooded on its mantle over the TV set and glared as we watched HOWDY DOODY, scowled with no less ferocity as we shifted to CAPTAIN KANGAROO and SESAME STREET, sneered with an equal contempt as we devoted our waning lives to various mutations of STAR TREK. It hated all of our TV shows, until it was battered into shards by one of the grandchildren during a marathon week of DANCING WITH THE JERKS."

If used with intelligence and care, the passive voice can become an essential tool in the box of prose.