Object Otto

No receiver? The letter had nowhere to go. No sender? No letter at all. No delivering? The letter just sat there. All three parts were needed.

Otto saw this pattern everywhere. He thought about it for years. Every gift had a giver and a receiver. Every talk had a speaker and a listener. Every choice had someone who decided. And someone who was affected. The world was full of receiving parties. By the time he was a teenager, Otto really paid attention. He always looked at the receiving side of things.

When Otto was eighteen, he went to school. He learned about formal grammar there. His teacher explained something. "The direct object is the noun that gets the verb's action," she said. "Like in The dog chased the ball. Ball is the direct object. It's what the dog chased."

Otto raised his hand. He said: "Like a letter and its recipient."

The teacher smiled. "Yes, exactly!" she said. "The verb is the action. The direct object gets that action. They go together."

Otto asked another question. "What if an action has a second receiver?" he wondered. "Someone the action goes through? But isn't the main receiver?"

The teacher said: "What do you mean?"

Otto gave an example. "The postman gave Mrs. Hudd a letter," he said. "The letter is the direct object. It's what was given. But Mrs. Hudd gets something too. She's the indirect receiver."

The teacher's eyes widened. "Yes, that's totally right!" she said. "Mrs. Hudd is the indirect object. English has direct objects. That's the thing acted on. It also has indirect objects. That's the person who gets the action. Like when you give or send something. You figured out indirect objects. All from watching the mail!"

Otto felt so happy. He never knew this was a "concept." He just thought it was how letters worked. His teacher showed him something. Grammar was just a fancy way to explain the mail system.

When Otto was twenty-one, he went to GrammarForge academy. He carried a big notebook. In it, he had sorted a thousand sentences. He grouped them by their *object structure. Some had direct objects. These were transitive. Some had no objects. These were intransitive. Some had two objects. Those were ditransitive. A direct and an indirect object*.

The academy master, Clause, was used to smart students. They often brought huge notebooks. Clause read Otto's notebook. He read it for thirty minutes. Then he gave Otto the public-affairs job. Right away!

Otto has been Object Otto for seventeen years.

Otto has his own office. It's in the Town Hall building. He has a small front desk there. This is where he greets *objects. Direct and indirect objects* "arrive" at his desk. He starts every first lesson the same way.

He sits at his desk. On it is a small wooden mail-tray. "I am Object Otto," he says. "I handle the receiving side of every sentence. The Mayor decides. The Chief of Operations acts. Then someone or something receives it. I make sure that receiver is all set."

He shows them how it works. He writes on the board:

"The dog chased the ball."

He points at the ball. "This is the direct *object," he explains. "The ball is what gets chased. The direct object receives the action. If there was no direct object*, 'chased' would be confusing. 'The dog chased' wouldn't make sense."

Next, he writes:

"She gave him a book."