A lot of people, a lot of Christians, love Remember the Titans, but doing so shows a lack of discernment–it’s bad. We establish boundaries around the movies our family will watch, but we enthusiastically let this one in. Perhaps the “G” rating isn’t an adequate measure of a movie’s merit.
Should we read Fairy Tales to our children? Can Christians read Harry Potter? This video is about the relationship between faith and fantasy.
This video concludes the discussion that fairy tales offer us a true picture of reality. They show us the effects of the Fall and an almost universal desire for Redemption and a happy ending:
The day is coming when we will no longer understand dystopian fiction or parody. This is bad news for those of us who love movies like Shrek and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In the not too distant future, people will stop reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four; they just won’t get why Winston puts up such a fight. I know you are excited to one day share Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games with your children or grandchildren, but when that day comes, they will neither understand nor enjoy it. I regret that the writing is on the wall. Time is running out for these two wonderful genres.
Dystopian fiction presents a hideous future. What makes the future so terrible? Well that’s the interesting thing about dystopian fiction. It’s something different every time.
Dystopian stories, as ugly as they are, are actually positive. They show us a possible future if our culture or society continue down the same path we are on. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale shows us what might happen if we continue to think of human beings, particularly women, in terms of roles rather than as individuals. Veronica Roth’s Divergent offers us a world in which society makes all decisions for you–so it is a warning against the group-think.
This genre has expIoded since the middle of the last century with A Brave New World (1932), Nineteen Eighty Four (1949), and Fahrenheit 451 (1953) getting things rolling. In recent years, dystopian narratives have become the staple of Young Adult Fiction.
Alas, a time is coming when we simply won’t understand these stories. When this happens, we will stop reading the old ones, and cease to create new ones. And this will not be because we will have arrived at some form of Utopia. It’s because we won’t accept the central tenet of all dystopian narratives.
The inherent value of a human being.
Fundamental to Western civilization is the value of human life. This goes back to the Judeo-Christian foundations of our culture. The creator God made all that is and he called it all Good. Then he created human beings. The first chapter of the first book tells the story.
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
God created human beings and then he put them into a position above all the things he made. This is important. In essence, humanity as a whole assumes the position previously limited to the Babylonian Priest-King. All of humanity–male and female–are given the role of King over all creation. Along with this position goes all the responsibility that goes along with Biblical kingship, from our royal position, creation is supposed to flourish under our rule. And no other created thing is to be placed in a position higher than a human being. This is idolatry.
The one thing that all dystopian narratives have in common, and from which they derive their energy, is that they are all about idolatry–placing some good thing in a position higher than humanity.
In 1984 it is power; in Brave New World it’s pleasure; in Logan’s Run it is youth; in The Hunger Games it is peace.
What happens when we no longer accept as self-evident the value of a human being over every other created thing?
This is what is happening in our culture.
The attack on “human exceptionalism” comes from several different quarters. Including those who seek to elevate animals to the same level as human beings. Part of the impulse for doing so is understandable. The modern world tends to commodify everything including animals, and as a species, we have been very busy altering environments necessary for animals to flourish to make them more profitable. The solution, however, it to not to elevate animals to the level of humanity (which is in essence to degrade humanity to the level of animal), but to take our God given position as the Crown of Creation. To be a king means to oversee the ordering and flourishing of one’s domain. This is our task.
When human beings are no longer thought of as valuable–the genre that is built on the principle of human value will cease to be relevant.
My hope is that the understanding of human value is so profound in us that, rather than going along with anti-human exceptionalism, someone will write a dystopian novel about the hideous future that may be a result of this turn.
A parody is an imitation of a type of literature, film, music or art, in which certain characteristics are exaggerated to create a humorous effect.
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is a parody of of the chivalric romances popular in his day.
Shaun of the Dead is a humorous imitation of Dawn of the Dead.
The first line of Pride and Prejudice is
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
The first line of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.
Parody relies on the uniqueness the various styles or genres–a Shakespearean drama is a different sort of thing than a Rom-Com, and both of these are very different from an American Western or a German Fairy Tale or a Greek epic. All of these styles are quite unmistakable; once you are familiar with one, you are not likely to confuse it with something else.
So what happens to parody when the boundaries between different categories cease to exist?
Parody is impossible when pastiche appears. Pastiche is imitation too. But unlike parody, pastiche it has no ulterior motive. Parody often has a whiff of satire about it–some impulse to expose a bit of foolishness. At the very least parody hopes to offer some pleasure when some higher things is brought down to earth though comic means.
Pastiche is parody that has lost its sense of humor. Pastiche is imitation without the meaning. It’s just the mask.
According to social theorist Fredrik Jameson, one of the most significant features of cultural postmodernism is pastiche. The whole idea of a literary style is rooted in something approaching an absolute–a universal idea by which we can determine in which category a literary work fits. Postmodernism does not cotton to these universals. So a movie set in the medieval era can have the audience of a jousting tournament singing Queen’s “We will Rock You” (Knights Tale 2001). And speaking of Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody is pastiche in that it imitates various styles including cappella, ballad, opera and rock and roll.
Without universal categories that differentiate various literary or artistic styles, we lose the ability to imitate a style for humorous effect–we lose parody.
Dystopian fiction and Parody are still around, but I don’t know for how long, so enjoy them while you can.
There are those who argue that Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is merely a loose compilation of autobiographical material, and while some evidence supports this claim, most scholars agree there is deliberate manipulation and arrangement of these episodes by the author to emphasize various themes—often related to Tom’s growth toward maturity (Hill 385).
Oh, there’s a deliberate arrangement of the episodes, but this arrangement is not just about growth toward maturity. Tom Sawyer is on a journey–a hero’s journey that is rooted in Mark Twain’s own identity which “depended heavily upon values embedded in home and hearth” (Kiskis 15). It is this domestic identity that is developed in Tom in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Mythologist Joseph Campbell claims a “marvelously constant story” (3) is present in the world’s great myths and, indeed, in all human stories. At the heart of these stories is a hero on a journey in search of something. Campbell calls this universal pattern the monomyth—and, regardless of the objective, a by-product of this journey is the constitution of the hero’s identity. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer contains the elements of the monomyth: the world of the common day, the call to adventure, the refusal of the call, and the road of trials. On the road, Tom endures the characteristic trials: the encounter with the temptress, the brother battle, and the battle with the dragon. And the journey ends with what Campbell calls the atonement with the father.
Through tests and trials, consistent with the stages in the hero’s journey as articulated by Campbell, Tom eventually abandons the lure of complete independence and instead, accepts the idea of “home, the boundaries of home, and the freedom gained by belonging (Kiskis 15).
In his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell articulates the recurrent pattern found in the world’s hero myths. The hero’s story begins with a character living in the ordinary world, or “the world of common day.” The hero’s journey is set in motion by means of a supernatural event, which pushes or pulls the hero toward a goal: this is “the call to adventure.” At this point, the individual is presented with a choice: to either accept or refuse the call. Those who choose to accept it begin the journey and once it is underway, the hero faces many tests on “the road of trials,” which stand between him and the ultimate goal.
Campbell identifies specific kinds of tests the hero often faces which produce a change in the hero. Among them are the “woman as temptress,” the “brother-battle” and the “battle with the dragon.” These tests are not always physical; they may also be mental, emotional, or spiritual. The hero is said to be in “the belly of the whale” when he experiences a symbolic death and resurrection and through this ordeal, he is transformed. This transformation results in the “atonement with the father.” Those who are able to pass the tests of the journey itself are rewarded with what Campbell called the “ultimate boon.” More important than achieving the ultimate boon is the ability to return to the community from which the journey began and communicate what has been learned. If he is able to understand the meaning of the experience and communicate the benefits of the journey to the community, then the hero’s journey is complete.
The hero’s journey begins in the world of the common day. This world is the context from which the hero will sally forth on his adventures, and it establishes a point of comparison between itself and the special world into which the hero moves. In the world of the common day, we see Tom caught between his need for a stable home environment and personal independence. On the one side are the forces that would socialize Tom—Aunt Polly in the home; the church and school do so as representatives of the larger community. At the center of the rules and regulations that govern the community of St. Petersburg is the Judge (N. Campbell 128). Opposed to these forces is the lure of freedom and independence—exemplified by the life of Huck Finn. It is in the tension between these two forces that we find Tom in his world of the common day.
Tom, clearly caught between these opposing forces, is not yet able to commit to one or the other. Placing Tom in the home of his aunt rather than his parents weakens the lure of home and hearth. In the first chapter, we find Tom chafing against the restrictions of home life, but he does so in the context of the stable home Aunt Polly provides. His rebellion manifested in the pilfering of homemade jam, and the revelation that he has skipped school discovered at family dinner shows that Tom is caught between the two worlds of complete freedom and social restriction. Later in the first chapter, he fights the well-dressed stranger whose dainty cap and necktie “ate into Tom’s vitals” (Twain 6). The real confrontation is symbolic of the battle against the alternate image of boyhood that the opponent represents (N. Campbell 130) for this child’s clothing reflects his acceptance of community standard. This fight shows Tom rejects the expectations of society but his rebellion is not complete. He is not transgressive, but only digressive (N. Campbell 131) meaning Tom works within boundaries as he tests them. The famous fence-painting scene illustrates this superbly: Tom does not transgress in that the fence is ultimately painted, but he does digress by not doing the work himself. In a similar way Tom chafes under the socializing forces imposed by the Church and School.
The Church and School are community institutions dedicated to socialization of the young—teaching them “to do right and be good” and here too we see Tom caught between the restrictions of community and the lure of freedom. In Sunday school they must sit “straight and pretty … the way good little boys and girls should do” (Twain 33). One little girl is chastised for looking out the window—a symbol of the domain of freedom. The learning of memory verses is a part of the process of socialization and with the help of Mary, Tom attempts to learn his verses, but without success. Still, through his own cleverness, he is able to secure a Bible (the reward for memorization) and he receives commendation, under false pretenses, from the Judge—the symbolic centre of the community.
In Tom’s ordinary world we find the process of socialization juxtaposed with the alternate impulse “toward the transgressive and to all that exists outside the disciplined and controlled precincts of St. Petersburg” (N. Campbell 129). In the church service, Tom is made to sit furthest away from the window and the “seductive outside” (Twain 40). Tom being drawn toward the “seductive outside” functions throughout the novel as the archetypical Temptress of the hero’s journey as it attempts to lure the hero away from his ultimate goal. This “tension is vital to the novel, for it indicates the precise position of Tom, caught between the pull to the outside and the comforting controls of supervision from community” (N. Campbell 129). This is the world of the common day for Tom Sawyer.
This ordinary world is static, but it is by no means stable (Vogler 99) and into this unstable world a new force appears. Joseph Campbell calls this unsettling force the “herald.” Its presence no longer allows the hero to maintain the status quo because it brings crisis that requires a decision. The crisis that results from its appearance is the call to adventure. The call “rings up the curtain, always, on a mystery of transfiguration which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a birth… the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand” (J. Campbell 51). For Tom Sawyer, it is the appearance of Becky Thatcher that brings about this crisis—she invites Tom to cross the threshold. Becky takes on supernatural importance to Tom when he first lays eyes on the “lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow hair.” The language Twain uses for this encounter gives it religious significance—“[h]e worshipped this new angel” (Twain 20). For Tom, the call to adventure is an invitation toward resolution of the tension that exists in his ordinary world—to accept domesticity and the security found within community.
Because the journey is fraught with danger, the hero does not always accept the call, at least not immediately. Tom does not accept the call to embrace community immediately because he is spurned by two important representatives of domesticity. Aunt Polly falsely accuses Tom for breaking the sugar bowl—when Sid dropped the bowl Tom was in “ecstasies” in anticipation of the punishment that Sid would receive, but instead Polly assumed that Tom was responsible and the “potent palm” fell upon him (Twain 23). Following this domestic injustice, Tom leaves in a sulk and finds himself near Becky’s home and he wonders if “the sacred presence” is there. As he waits by the window, Tom’s “holy calm” is “profaned” by the voice of a maidservant and he is deluged with washing water. Then at school, he declares his love for Becky and even receives a kiss. However, he blunders in referring to his previous engagement to Amy Lawrence and Becky cries. He tries to offer her his most prized possession, “a brass knob from the top of an andiron,” (94) but she refuses the gift. This is the last straw and Tom leaves, not only the school but the community altogether. Immediately after he receives the call to adventure to commit to home, he is spurned by its representatives and so he balks at the call and flees.
Flight is an option for all heroes, but it is a particular characteristic of the American hero. “The presence of escape, or flight, in the modern American novel has long reflected a dominant mood in American life” (Bluefarb 3). Tom’s escape to Jackson’s Island, his refusal of the call, is an attempt to resolve the conflict between domesticity and freedom in favour of freedom. On Jackson’s Island, the first stop on the road of trials, the conflict is intensified as Tom learns the joys, but also the significant drawbacks of freedom from community. Tom and his friend Joe Harper and Huck escape the confines of society and go to Jackson’s Island where they plan to “lead a life of crime” (Twain 108)—they will be pirates. As Tom wakes up the first morning he peacefully observes an inchworm, then ants hauling dead spiders, and later a ladybug, images showing how natural and serene complete independence is compared to the rigid rules imposed by society. Symbolic of their rebellion, Huck teaches Tom and Joe how to smoke, but they become violently ill—symbolic of the excesses of freedom. Further, Tom “could not keep back thoughts of certain persons at home” (Twain 123); so, unable to completely ignore the draw of home, Tom secretly returns and spies on the grieving Polly and he was “touched by his aunt’s grief” (Twain 128). He returns to the island only because he has plans for a more dramatic return home. That night the island has become less hospitable; at midnight “there was a brooding oppressiveness” (Twain 139). The ensuing storm was violent; it was “a wild night for homeless young heads to be out in” (italics mine)(Twain 141). According to Hamelin, it was Twain’s plan to have Tom leave Jackson’s Island and embark on adventures in many lands, only to return years later. This adventure he saved for Huckleberry Finn because Tom was not the right character for such an adventure (387-9). Twain realized that Tom, as this first test on the road of trials shows, could not ignore the security, in spite of its restrictions, that human society affords (N. Campbell 131-132). The boys’ return to the community is during their own funeral service symbolizing a resurrection. Mythically, a transformation occurs through rebirth/resurrection, and in his case, it is Tom’s acceptance of the call. Although he is not yet aware of it, the boon at the end of his journey will be the acceptance of domesticity and incorporation into community.
Once the hero accepts the call he “undertakes for himself the perilous journey into the darkness by descending … into the crooked lanes of his own spiritual labyrinth, he soon finds himself in a landscape of symbolical figures (J. Campbell 101): the temptress, the brother, the dragon.
The role of temptress is filled by the “seductive outside”—the appeal of independence—which pulls Tom in the world of the common day. This force is present in each of the encounters on the road of trials.
The conflict between Tom and Huckleberry Finn represents Joseph Campbell’s brother-battle and in this battle, Tom struggles against his desire for the independence that Huck represents. Huck shares a love for freedom and adventure with Tom, but lives outside of the community. Huck is the “juvenile pariah of the village” and Tom envied “his gaudy outcast condition” (Twain 51). Since he is the son of the rarely seen town drunkard, not only is Huck independent of any parental restriction, he also remains free from the towns socializing institutions, School, and the Church. “In one way, [Tom] vicariously realizes this dream [to freedom] through his friendship with Huck, for the latter’s enviable freedom largely arises out of an irrevocably lost homelife” (Grove 389).
The relationship between Tom and Huck changes gradually over the course of the novel, however, as Tom progresses further on his journey toward accepting community. Initially, Tom looks up to Huck with admiration and “uses this friendship to make his own life seem more rebellious and less domestic” (Grove 389) but through the brother battle the relationship between the boys is inverted and Tom becomes leader and Huck the follower. One day the “raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure” (Twain 194) comes upon Tom and he seeks Huck to assist. On this quest, Tom is clearly the leader and the source of all the knowledge regarding the nature and location of buried treasure. His leadership continues as the boys plot to secure the treasure they hear that Injun Joe has hidden away. The shift in the relationship between the two boys shows Tom’s progression toward community and away from the independence that Huck represents. When Tom decides to testify in court regarding the death of Dr. Robinson, he follows his conscience to uphold the law and justice. Tom testifies to Muff Potter’s innocence and declares Injun Joe’s guilt, but in doing so he breaks the vow of silence he makes with Huck indicating a split between the two (N. Campbell 132). In his decision to testify, Tom declares his loyalty to community, rather than the independence that Huck demonstrates by his willingness to remain silent.
One of the more significant trials the hero must undergo is the slaying of the dragon—often a symbol of the hero’s own suppressed internal monsters and in overcoming the dragon, the hero is cleansed of the monstrous within him. Where Huck represents a marginal transgression of community rule and security, Injun Joe is symbolic of the “limitless capacity for violation” (N. Campbell 132) of community and the law—thus, Injun Joe represents what Campbell calls the dragon. Injun Joe “lives forever beyond the margins of the community” (N. Campbell 132) as is illustrated in his temporary occupation as body snatcher and in his violence and murder of the doctor, an important person in the community. When Tom makes his appearance in court and tells the truth about Injun Joe’s guilt, he chooses the side of justice and the restrictions of freedom found in society. The latter escapes from the court through a window, still representing the “seductive outside.” From that point on the shadow of Injun Joe begins to ‘infest… all [Tom’s] dreams’ (Twain 192) and the inevitable confrontation between Tom and this dragon builds throughout the novel to the extent that in one heightened instance he almost stepped on Injun Joe’s hand (Twain 220). The final confrontation with the shadow occurs in what Campbell calls the belly of the whale.
For Campbell, the belly of the whale experience represents a symbolic entry and rebirth from the “worldwide womb”; the hero “is swallowed into the unknown, and would appear to have died” (J. Campbell 90). This is not always a literal death, but symbolically a hero must die so that he can be reborn (Vogler 159). McDougal’s cave is “a psychological space wherein the seductive outside has been made tangible for Tom” (N. Campbell 133). It is “a vast labyrinth of crooked isles that … led nowhere” (Twain 225). Tom’s journey with Becky into McDougal’s cave is a symbolic death where he is taken completely out of the community. Tom faces not only his own death, but more importantly that of Becky; he “was appalled with the idea that she might die” (247-8). When they tried to comfort each other, “they talked of home, and the friends there, and the comfortable beds, and above all, the light!” (Twain 248). Tom’s concern for Becky’s life and the comfort they find in domestic images illustrates the extent of his transformation and is augmented as they chare their “wedding cake” (250) and share a kiss (254). While in the cave separated from community, Tom intensely experiences that which he values—Becky and the security of home that she represents.
Tom’s story parallels that of Injun Joe as the narrative alternates between their stories. While Tom worries about Becky, reflects on the security of domestic life, and eats wedding cake, Injun Joe plans an attack on the Widow Douglas. Here we see his most severe transgression of all social standards. He plans to “slit her nostrils” and “notch her ears” then “tie her to the bed” (Twain 229). His plans clearly have “undertones of deadly rape, for he plans to violate and deform two of her bodily orifices, her nose and her ears, then watch her bleed to death in the bedroom” (Aspiz 148). “Overt rape, of course, was hardly suitable stuff for a nineteenth-century boy’s book” (Aspiz 148), but this assault on the kind and helpless old woman is symbolic of Injun Joe’s disregard for community, and the extremes to which his expressions of “freedom” extend. Later the parallel between Tom and Injun Joe is strengthened when Tom sees Injun Joe in the cave. Tom emerges; Injun Joe does not. Symbolically, in the death of Injun Joe, the lure of complete freedom from society has also died within Tom. Through the ordeal Tom has died, and been reborn; through this rebirth, he has been transformed. The extreme transgression of community values that Injun Joe represents is dead and “the urge for security out of the indisciplined moment of crisis in the cave mark Tom’s final incorporation into the community” (N. Campbell 135).
After the ordeal in the cave, a significant moment in the hero’s journey is made possible—atonement with the father. Initially, in some symbolic way, the son sees the father as a rival; the father is alienated from the son as either a monster—a thing to be feared, or a god—something to be revered. The alienation from his father is emphasized in that Tom is an orphan, and atonement is achieved with his symbolic father—Judge Thatcher. Neil Campbell says, “Tom is enclosed in the world of Judge Thatcher” (135). Indeed the Judge, as its highest authority, represents the community into which Tom is being called. The relationship between Tom and Judge Thatcher is one of alienation. The Judge inspires awe when he visits the Sunday School—he was “altogether the most august creation [the] children had ever looked upon, and they wondered what kind of material he was made of, and they half wanted to hear him roar, and were half afraid he might too” (Twain 35). This description shows that to the children, the judge is both god and monster. Tom treats to the Judge as a rival and with a spirit of “showing off,” produces enough tickets to receive a Bible-prize. Tom is “elevated… to the judicial one’s altitude, and the school had two marvels to gaze upon in place of one” (Twain 36). In this scene, Tom sees the Judge as an adversary.
“Atonement (at-one-ment) happens when a hero abandons notions of the father as dragon-thought-to-be-God and dragon-thought-to-be-sin” (Campbell 130). Then father becomes “the initiating priest through whom the young being passes on into the larger world” (136). After Tom and Becky’s safe return from the cave, the Judge “conceived a great opinion of Tom” (Twain 277). When told of Tom’s lie which spared Becky a whipping at school, Thatcher transforms Tom’s “mighty lie” into one that is “noble … generous … magnanimous.” He goes so far as to compare Tom with George Washington—“Tom, through the interjection of the Judge’s discourse of communal and judicial law, has become akin to the Father of his Country, the very figure of America’s sense of honesty, truth and goodness” (N. Campbell 135). Thatcher continues to lay out Tom’s future; he will be “a great lawyer or a great soldier” (277). It is the future of any properly socialized individual in that it “conforms to the expectations of respectable, institutional professions and confirms Tom’s position in the group” (N. Campbell 136). By achieving atonement with this father figure, Tom achieves symbolic oneness with his community and he begins to live out of a new transformed identity. For the “ultimate aim of each son is to regain his identity, which is initially the identity conferred upon him by being his particular father’s son” (Stahl 209). It is his symbolic father that confers this identity on Tom.
Following the atonement, the son fills the fatherly “role of the initiator, the guide” (J. Campbell 137). The final stage in the hero’s journey is his return with the “ultimate boon” or “elixir” (J. Campbell 181). As a result of his journey, the hero has gained possession of a boon that is of benefit to others. Bringing back the elixir is the final test of the hero on his journey. It proves he has defeated death, and through his rebirth he has been transformed (Vogler 227). As through the entire novel, Tom’s position is finally contrasted to that of Huck Finn. Where Tom has been fully incorporated into the community by the words of Judge Thatcher, Huck experiences social control as “the bars and shackles of civilization [that] shut him in and bound him hand and foot” (Twain 278). “The enclosure that Tom accepts willingly, Huck resists” (N. Campbell 136). “[W]ealth … protection … society” threatens his need to live outside the community and he has to be ‘dragged … [and] hurled … into it’ (Twain 277). Symbolic of the elixir he carries, Tom becomes an advocate for the restrictions imposed by society for he sees also benefits of the security one finds in community. “To emphasize Tom’s total and overt conformity it is he who takes on the policing parent role with Huck, who tries to escape the new regime or order” (N. Campbell 136). “The rules of the community are internalized in Tom and find expression in his desire to control the waywardness of Huck who cannot accept ‘tem ways’ because they smother him with control” (N. Campbell 137). So Tom fills the father role as he attempts to initiate Huck into the community. At the end of the hero’s journey, Tom’s identity has been constituted as he accepts “home, the boundaries of home, and the freedom gained by belonging (Kiskis 15).
Tom Sawyer’s adventures are not merely a collection of Twain’s recollections from his childhood. They are events that taken en masse depict Tom’s heroic journey from a world in which he is caught in the tension between community expectation and individual independence. Through a series of tests and trials, he endures symbolic battles which test him. Through the climactic ordeal in the cave he dies and is “reborn out of the dark, womb-like cave into the masculinized world of his new father” (N. Campbell 137), after which he exhibits the transformation of his identity as he functions as representative of the community and the security of home.
Works Cited
Aspiz, Harold. “Tom Sawyer’s Games of Death.” Studies in the Novel 27 (1995): 141-153.
Bluefarb, Sam. The Escape Motif in the American Novel. Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press. 1972.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Pantheon Books. 1949.
Campbell, Neil. “The ‘Seductive Outside” and the ‘Sacred Precincts’: Boundaries and Transgressions in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” Children’s Literature in Education. 25 (1984): 125-138.
Grove, James. “Mark Twain and the Endangered Family.” American Literature 57 (1985) : 377-394.
Hill, Hamlin L.. “The Composition and the Structure of Tom Sawyer.” American Literature 61 (1989): 379-392.
Kiskis, Michael J. “Mark Twain and the Tradition of Literary Domesticity.” Constructing Mark Twain: New Directions in Scholarship. Eds. Laura E. Skandera Trombley and Michael J. Kiskis. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001. 13-27.
Stahl, John Daniel. “American Myth in European Disguise: Fathers and Sons in The Prince and the Pauper.” American Literature 58 (1986): 203-216.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. London: Puffin Books, 1994.
Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey. Studio City, CA: M. Wiese Productions, 1992.
Image from iMDb
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, is a book that changed the way I viewed the world.
First Monday in October (1981) is a movie that shaped, if not my view of the world, at least my position on all issues surrounding Freedom of Speech.
Apparently, it isn’t a very good movie. The Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score for First Monday in October is 46% (there is no Critics Consensus).
I don’t remember if Walter Matthau was brilliant as Supreme Court Justice Daniel Snow. Nor do I if Jill Clayburn was any good at her portrayal of the presidential appointee to the Supreme court.
I just remember one scene.
And it has stuck with me for almost 40 years. And, given the way the world has changed in the last few years, I think about it almost daily.
It was a single conversation that makes this movie memorable for me.
But here is what I remember:
The Supreme Court needs to decide what the law says about an obscene movie. Liberal Justice Daniel Snow (Matthau) refuses to go to a screening of the movie. He says it is immaterial to how he intends to vote. Newly appointed, conservative, justice Ruth Loomis (Clayburn), insists that Snow must watch the film in order to decide if it ought to be protected under the tenets of Freedom of Speech.
Snow knows how he will vote regardless of how bad the content is–he will not limit Freedom of Speech.
Going into the film, I think my view would have been similar to that of Loomis; I came out agreeing with Snow. And I still do. I think Freedom of Speech is foundational to our culture. If pornographers are free to express their material, then I am allowed to express my opinions too.
It’s another world today. The roles seem to have been reversed. It’s not just conservatives who want to limit free speech. People on the extreme liberal end of the spectrum seem to be quite willing to silence the speech of any who disagree with them–even fellow liberal extremists who express a different flavour of liberal extremism. And it feels as if the willingness to suppress, not just voice, but thought itself is moving in from the extreme.
Interestingly, conservative are now joining moderate liberals in the defense of free speech, but this support seems to be quite selective.
What disturbs me is that dialogue is being stifled–quite unapologetically.
I don’t know if we will ever go back to having conversations and arguments about what we believe, all the while allowing that the other has the right to say what they will. I hope so.
Trixieliko / Pixabay
Recently, I heard a pastor admit from the pulpit that he didn’t read fiction–I’ve heard this before. These confessions are not usually necessary for it is usually apparent from their sermons.
I have heard the reasons. Some don’t read because they see reading fiction was a frivolous endeavor, even a dangerous one. Others, because they have no time. After you read the Bible and the theology texts, blogs, and all those books on Christian living, there isn’t any time for fiction. Some don’t read fiction because, “Well, it just isn’t my thing.”
I perused several articles in which other pastors exhort their colleagues to read fiction. These articles offer some very good reasons for pastors to read fiction, but they didn’t give the most important reasons, which I will save for last.
Reading a novel is relaxing, and pastors should find time to relax. Reading The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson is a great read, but it’s a book for the beach. I’m not arguing that pastors read more beach books, although it couldn’t hurt.
We all live narrow lives and look at the world with a fairly limited vision. I am a white, North American male who was born in the early 1960s. I look at the world through these lenses. I was never sexually abused. I don’t know what it is like to be an immigrant or a tanner in India. I don’t have autism or a brother with schizophrenia.
When you read good fiction, you are immersed in the reality of these things. Can you see how imaginatively understanding these things would make one a better pastor?
Good art, be it visual arts, music, or fiction, is good because it is rooted in an endlessly creative God who has chosen to be imaged by creative human beings. Art isn’t irrelevant. It’s part of what God commanded us to do in the beginning. When you enjoy truth and beauty, when you are blessed by gifts God has given to other human beings, you are enjoying a universe that, though fallen, God delights in as “very good.”
Good fiction challenges us where we need challenging: In The Art of Fiction, John Gardner says fiction “helps us to know what we believe, reinforces those qualities that are noblest to us, leads us to feel uneasy about our faults and limitations.” If Gardner is right, and I think he is, what human being, let alone pastor, wouldn’t benefit from the reading of good fiction.
As poetry is “the art of saying what cannot be said” (Alan Watts), narrative attempts to explain the inexplicable. You can’t deal with ideas like Good, Sin, Death, Sacrifice, Grace, Love, Redemption, etc. propositionally. Only narrative is up to the task. A sermon delving into topics like these needs the support of a mind that has been broadened and deepened by fiction, stories which have taken the preacher to an understanding beyond personal experience and theology.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”If you can’t read fiction, then you can’t read the Bible. #Fiction #Theology #TheBible ” quote=”If you can’t read fiction, then you can’t read the Bible. “]
These are all great reasons for pastors to read fiction, but there are still more compelling reasons.
The Bible is a collection of all sorts of literary genres, and all of these are ancient expressions of these genres. Ideally, you’d need to read all sorts of ancient texts, in their original languages, just to begin to get a sense of how to read the biblical text. There are people who can read these texts this way, and we can read their books and articles, but our access to the original texts is indirect. We need direct engagement with texts in general in order to understand the role of the reader–a role that involves far more than our mind, but our heart and soul and imagination as well.
The Bible doesn’t simply address man as a cognitive process but as a complex image-bearer who recognizes truth not only through categorizing syllogisms but through imagination, beauty, wonder, awe.
The Bible is not simply a text that we mine in order to extract nuggets of truth.
It’s not an encyclopedia, and it shouldn’t be read as one.
The tools one needs to read the Bible are the same tools one develops when one reads good fiction.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”The tools one must develop in order to read the Bible are the same tools one develops when one reads good fiction.” quote=”The tools one must develop in order to read the Bible are the same tools one develops when one reads good fiction.”]
Many North American Christians are still under the influence of Modernism. We tend to equate truth with fact. We think that for the Bible to be true, it must be factual. This gets us into all sorts of problems with our interpretation of the Bible. We will reject the intended meaning of a text when we reject the very mode in which the text was intended to be read.
Most pastors know that the Bible is not anything like an encyclopedia, but we have been so steeped in Modern thinking for so long that it is sometimes a struggle to step out of a rationalist reading of the Bible, and reading a steady diet of theology reinforces this error.
The pastor who reads theology, but not fiction, is like a biology lecturer, who has dissected a thousand frogs, and keeps dozens in his lab, but hasn’t patiently them in the pond. He knows so much, but his understanding of frogs is illuminated by a fluorescent light and contained within the glass walls of an aquarium.
How can we reset our default settings–our idolatrous, Modern settings–so we can better read the Bible?
Read good fiction.
Reading fiction will develop the understanding, and we will come to understand that the opposite of fiction is fact, not truth.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”The opposite of fiction is fact, not truth.” quote=”The opposite of fiction is fact, not truth.”]
Many sermons can be preached effectively by a pastor who doesn’t read fiction, but there certain times when a broader reading list would greatly improve what we hear from the pulpit. And occasionally, it will protect the speaker from coming off sounding silly.
What should I read?
Read from the “top 100 books you must read before you die” list. Read from the best books of 2020, or 2019. And read old books. C. S. Lewis explains why.
OK, so here are some recommendations.
My favourite book of all-time is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. It’s funny and profound. I’ve written about why this book is so essential for Christians to read in a series of posts. But read the book before you read the posts. It’s far better, and less propositional.
Any and all of the short stories of Flannery O’Connor. Pick up one of her collections like Everything that Rises Must Converge. O’Connor takes a hard and critical look at Christianity in a Modern context, and she also reintroduces readers to God’s Grace despite ourselves.
If I were ever stranded on a desert island, and I couldn’t take the Bible, I would take The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. It doesn’t replace the Bible, because it isn’t the inspired word of God, but it contains so many of the essential Biblical themes and truths, that it might sustain me until I get rescued.
1984 by George Orwell is one of the best books of the 20th Century. Everyone should read it. It’s brilliantly written is is as relevant today as it was in 1984, and 1949 when it when it was published.
Watership Down by Richard Adams is about rabbits, but it’s also about human nature, faith, trust, and leadership. And another thousand things. This one is great on Audible, read by Ralph Cosham.
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry takes the reader to India in the 1950s. You might not be interested in India in the 1950s. It doesn’t matter. The book is very well written and you become invested very quickly. If nothing else, it exercises our empathy, helping us to step in the shoes of others who live in very different circumstances.
You’ve heard of the problem of evil, the strongest challenge to the Christian God. Like all of his work, The Road by Cormac McCarthy is about the problem of good. This is a dark novel, but the distant glimmer of light and hope argues that life must be about more than suffering and death.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. This one is a doozy. It’s monstrous. (Read this hilarious article about “How to Read Infinite Jest.“). This book rivals A Prayer for Owen Meany for my all-time favourite book. But if you are not a fan of fiction just yet, hold off for a year or 10.
The good news is there are thousands more. You’d find a lot more recommendations in the comment section if this blog had a huge following, but there might be one or two there as well.
Happy Reading!
Photo by Krzysztof Niewolny on Unsplash
Envy eats vipers and the poison of her victuals accumulates and concentrates in her body till her skin erupts in green, festering blisters.
I was reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses with coffee this morning. Ovid was a Roman poet and this work is considered his magnum opus. Anyway, in book 2 there is this incredible description of Envy. Minerva is super mad at Aglauros, so she goes to Envy to ask her to curse Agrauros with a touch.
[Minerva] Then sought out Envy in her dark abode,
Defil’d with ropy gore and clots of blood:
Shut from the winds, and from the wholesome skies,
In a deep vale the gloomy dungeon lies,
Dismal and cold, where not a beam of light
Invades the winter, or disturbs the night.
Directly to the cave her course she steer’d;
Against the gates her martial lance she rear’d;
The gates flew open, and the fiend appear’d.
A pois’nous morsel in her teeth she chew’d,
And gorg’d the flesh of vipers for her food.
Minerva loathing turn’d away her eye;
The hideous monster, rising heavily,
Came stalking forward with a sullen pace,
And left her mangled offals on the place.
Soon as she saw the goddess gay and bright,
She fetch’d a groan at such a chearful sight.
Livid and meagre were her looks, her eye
In foul distorted glances turn’d awry;
A hoard of gall her inward parts possess’d,
And spread a greenness o’er her canker’d breast;
Her teeth were brown with rust, and from her tongue,
In dangling drops, the stringy poison hung.
She never smiles but when the wretched weep,
Nor lulls her malice with a moment’s sleep,
Restless in spite: while watchful to destroy,
She pines and sickens at another’s joy;
Foe to her self, distressing and distrest,
She bears her own tormentor in her breast.
–2.760-782
The Greeks and the Romans had a penchant for personifying emotions and ideas. Personification is a figure of speech were objects and ideas are given human qualities or are represented in human form. Ovid takes the human emotion, envy, and makes it into a person–Envy.
What attracted me to this representation of Envy is that it struck me as true. I’ve seen this creature before, not only in others but in myself as well. It will do us well to look take a careful look at her in order to know the effects of her touch.
Envy’s dwelling is hidden in a “deep vale.”
The vice, envy, is also hidden. Envy is different than the other deadly sins. It is fairly easy to see Wrath and Gluttony, and we aren’t all that embarrassed by them. Some, like Greed and Pride, are even celebrated in our culture–even Lust is celebrated today. But not Envy. We don’t want any one to see our envy. To show envy we’d be admitting that we feel inferior. Envy is so petty. We know it’s petty, and we are embarrassed by it.
Envy personified in hidden away in a dark and “gloomy dungeon” where the air is stagnant; it is “dismal and cold.”
Envy gorges on “the flesh of vipers.” Her appetites are both glutenous and foul. Her heavy rising suggests she is not wasting away, but this is poisoned food. The toxins from the vipers feeds her malice which bubbles in “greenness o’er her canker’d breast.”
As with the diet of Envy personified, the emotion of envy is nourishing as well–we take a small comfort in the misery of others. But this comfort is toxic. The one who envies is in the hideous state of being eaten while eating.
Shakespeare and Ovid are on the same page here:
“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.”Othello–Shakespeare
All the other seven-deadly-sins involve some element of pleasure for the sinner. Not so with envy. Not only do you not enjoy the sin, but the very nature of envy also makes you unable to enjoy the good things you do have. You can’t enjoy your beauty, wealth, strength, intelligence because someone else is more beautiful, richer, stronger, or smarter.
Envy enjoys nothing–she doesn’t enjoy her food; she doesn’t enjoy the beauty of her visitor; she never even enjoys the pleasure of taking a little nap once in a while.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”All the other seven-deadly-sins involve some element of pleasure for the sinner. Not so with envy. Not only do you not enjoy the sin, but the very nature of envy also makes you unable to enjoy the good things you do have.” quote=”All the other seven-deadly-sins involve some element of pleasure for the sinner. Not so with envy. Not only do you not enjoy the sin, but the very nature of envy also makes you unable to enjoy the good things you do have.”]
Envy is immortal, but what happens when she touches you?
Minerva commands Envy to destroy Aglauros, and she does so with a touch. Here’s what happens:
To execute Minerva’s dire command,
She stroak’d the virgin with her canker’d hand,
Then prickly thorns into her breast convey’d,
That stung to madness the devoted maid:
Her subtle venom still improves the smart,
Frets in the blood, and festers in the heart.To make the work more sure, a scene she drew,
And plac’d before the dreaming virgin’s view
Her sister’s marriage, and her glorious fate:
Th’ imaginary bride appears in state;
The bride-groom with unwonted beauty glows:For envy magnifies what-e’er she shows.
Full of the dream, Aglauros pin’d away
In tears all night, in darkness all the day;
Consum’d like ice, that just begins to run,
When feebly smitten by the distant sun;
Or like unwholsome weeds, that set on fire
Are slowly wasted, and in smoke expire.
Argros is destroyed by envy of her sister’s marriage–something one would hope would make her happy. Instead, because of envy, she pines away. Melts like ice on a sunny day. Burns up like dry grass in a fire.
Worship of God takes care of envy. By this, I do not necessarily mean singing praise and worship songs in church.
Experience of God’s love and grace erases envy. Where do you experience these things? Songs? Maybe you do. I don’t.
I get it from Word and Sacrament.
But let me focus briefly on the sacrament of communion. In The Lord’s Supper, Christ extends his hand to us and gives us the sacrifice of his body and blood. His death erases my sin and brings me into the family of the Heavenly Father. Nothing is required of me except to accept the offer of this incredible gift. I get so much, for so little.
In the light of the overwhelming Grace of God, how can I be harbour resentment for someone is smarter, or more beautiful, or more wealthy than I am?
Photo by Fred Kearney on Unsplash
I am doing a “Banned Books” unit in my English 12 class this year.
The idea came to me when I heard that it was Banned Books Week (this year, September 22-28). This is an annual religious festival in honour of one of our culture’s main deities–Freedom. More particular, we celebrate the freedom to read. Because, in some circles, to challenge a book is to challenge a god, the celebration can sometimes take on a “screw you” sort of tone. But this is a worthy focus week, even for those for those who don’t bend the knee to freedom, for there are worrisome current and dangerous historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. These are often attempting not just to protect the vulnerable but to limit thought. Most of the books on the banned books lists were not, in fact, banned but challenged by someone somewhere about the use of these books in a classroom or their presence in a library. I like to use the word banned because, sure, it’s more sensational, but mostly because it alliterates so nicely. As in . . .
No, we are not reading Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James, not only because the content is inappropriate for young readers, but because it isn’t very good.
That’s the interesting thing, most of the books on the banned or challenged book list are the same books that have been taught in schools for decades. In other words, most of the banned books are the best books.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Most of the banned books are the best books. #BannedBooks #BookBurning #Censorship #GreatBooks” quote=”Most of the banned books are the best books.”]
There’s a reason for this: the best books are often provocative.
Books that aren’t banned ask little of readers. They affirm our values and fulfill in the end what they promise in the beginning. Books that aren’t banned, are often bland books.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”What should we read in school, bland books or banned books? #BannedBooks #GreatBooks” quote=”What should we read in school, bland books or banned books?”]
Books that make demands of its readers are challenged. Books that challenge readers to look at the world differently are burned. Books that startle and shock us out of our comfort zone are banned. These are the books we should be reading.
The books that do this, are the best books, and they are the banned books.
Here’s a list of some books that have been challenged; it’s also my recommended reading list. Its a list of books that everyone should read before they die, or better yet, long before they die so that having read them may do some good.
These next three I actually haven’t read, but I’ve read what my students have written about them. These stories had an impact. Students understood, in a meaningful way, something more about our indigenous neigbours, systemic racism, and the girl with no hope.
I re-read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 this past week. Montag, the protagonist of the story is a firemen. In this futuristic world this job entails the burning of books and the houses that contain them. How did the culture come to this? Captain Beatty’s speech to Montag explains:
“When did it all start, you ask, this job of ours, how did it come about, where, when? Well, I’d say it really got started around about a thing called the Civil War . . . . The fact is we didn’t get along well until photography came into its own. Then–motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass.”
“And because they had mass, they became simpler,” said Beatty. “Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?”
“Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”
“Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet . . . was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: now at least you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors. Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.”
“Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click? Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!”
“School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?”
“Life becomes one big pratfall, Montag; everything bang, boff, and wow!”
“More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don’t have to think, eh? Organize and organize and super organize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less. Impatience.
“Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic-books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! 3 Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.”
“Yes, but what about the firemen, then?” asked Montag.
“Ah.” Beatty leaned forward in the faint mist of smoke from his pipe. “What more easily explained and natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word `intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors. That’s you, Montag, and that’s me.”
“You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.”
“Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Bum the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator. Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too. Five minutes after a person is dead he’s on his way to the Big Flue, the Incinerators serviced by helicopters all over the country. Ten minutes after death a man’s a speck of black dust. Let’s not quibble over individuals with memoriams. Forget them. Burn them all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.”
…If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the Government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely `brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won’t be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I’ve tried it; to hell with it. So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your dare-devils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the Theremin, loudly. I’ll think I’m responding to the play, when it’s only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don’t care. I just like solid entertainment.”
Beatty got up. “I must be going. Lecture’s over. I hope I’ve clarified things. The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we’re the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dyke. Hold steady. Don’t let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don’t think you realize how important you are, we are, to our happy world as it stands now.”
“One last thing,” said Beatty. “At least once in his career, every fireman gets an itch. What do the books say, he wonders. Oh, to scratch that itch, eh? Well, Montag, take my word for it, I’ve had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe. They’re about nonexistent people, figments of imagination, if they’re fiction. And if they’re nonfiction, it’s worse, one professor calling another an idiot, one philosopher screaming down another’s gullet. All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost.”
Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash
Here are my favourite dystopian novels. I placed them in order of the pleasure I derived from reading them, and their signficance, and their literary merit:
Next on my list is A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962).
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Here is my list of my favorite dystopian fiction novels. Did I miss any? #dystopian #novels #1984″ quote=”Here is my list of my favorite dystopian fiction novels. Did I miss any? “]
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