Columns

Guest Column

Retired Columns

Other

Submissions

A Critical Look

May 21st, 2003

by Steven Kilpatrick

As you all can see I’ve been pumping out the articles like crazy.  I’ve written 24 articles for the Crapper now including this one and five of them came in the last two weeks.

I quite enjoy giving my weekly or bi-weekly life updates as an intro to this column before we get into the meaty stuff, and I hope everyone enjoys the work I’ve been doing lately.  Still, this isn’t a weekly journal entry so let’s get on to the flesh and bone of this mess.

This weeks essay was part of an assignment to challenge those who question the need of the liberal arts.  Many of our early papers in my writing class had a heavy flavor of the Dead Poets Society in them thanks to the striking correlation between the movie and the ideas we were discussing.  The quotes contained herein are from the movie, or sometimes directly from Hemmingway’s text. 

The Importance of Literature

Literature is the physical pouring of man’s emotion in the form of written word.  Poetry inspires the heart, epics inspire the hero in each of us, drama makes the blood boil and tragedy can make our tears flow like babies.  There isn’t a man or woman alive who hasn’t read a book or poem and taken from it some emotion, be it fear, or hate, or love.  Whether literature brings a smile or a tear its effects are apparent in the world around us.  Our lives are shaped by the stories we read or the ideas we share.  Literature isn’t limited to fiction or poetry.  Literature is any written piece, but it is usually recognized by its beauty of style or thought and not by endless lines of facts.

When you think of the people who shaped our culture most were no less than romantic visionaries.  The world wasn’t shaped by conventional thinkers; the world was shaped by idealists and dreamers.  Conventional thinkers would have the world flat, the Earth at the center of the universe and would boar holes in the heads of sick children to release the demons inside. 

Dreamers usually aren’t associated with dry mountains of dull rhetoric.  To test this rather bold statement put this question to yourself:  Can you think of the man who wrote your Algebra text?  Now, can you think of the man who wrote “Romeo and Juliet”?  For the majority the answer to the first would be “no” while the answer to the second would be “yes”.  You can make that question even broader by including the man who wrote your favorite western or the writer of a movie you enjoy. I’m not underscoring the importance of Algebra by any means; I am simply saying that algebra doesn’t offer you anything to struggle with when it’s over.  When you do algebra you work until the answer is there and that’s that.  There is no moral struggle or deep seated mystery of life to uncover.  It becomes a mere tool whose effects are greatly limited by the person who wields it.  Literature is a tool as well, but literature refuses to be limited by any one individual. In many cases the writer can’t even rein in the potential of a work that he or she has written because it can mean so much to so many.  Literature is like a “life simulator” that allows you to glean experience and wisdom without ever doing more than reading the text.  The uses you gain from literature transcend the basics of the human emotion on the road to a much larger implementation.  Algebra, or math, or sciences give us tools to build cars, or rockets or homes, but literature gives us the ability to build ideals.  Literature is a very forceful tool because unlike the other tools mentioned it doesn’t work with what we know or what we see, it focuses on what we desire.  With literature we can design a different world hundreds of years before science has the power to make it available, but because we envisioned it some inspired man of science could work towards it.  Even if science never realizes our dream the fact that we enjoyed the vision is a very powerful statement. 

Anyone can flow day to day on other’s established facts, but literature gives us the opportunity to create our own realities and perhaps someday see our dreams come to life.   Perhaps you know algebra as well as you know your own language, but without emotional guidance you may not know where to apply it.  Suppose you were to read a science fiction novel and it inspired you to work towards reaching the stars.  Science gives you a method to reach your dream, but it doesn’t awaken the dream.  Literature is the vessel to transport what you know and combine it with your ideas and dreams.  As quoted from “The Dead Poet’s Society”: 

“Medicine, law, business, engineering- these are all noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life.  But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for..” 

In short all the other things we do, be it math or science or medicine, are done merely to preserve and extend our time spent with romance and beauty.  Without medicine and science we would certainly live shorter lives, and we might have fewer conveniences, but literature would still exist.  Long before there was math we had poetry.  It was sung around campfires at night or painted on cave walls.  It was not only a collection of words, but it was a lesson in life.  It was how laws were passed down, it was how personalities were made and traditions were started.  Without literature we wouldn’t have the ability to pass down our ideas of right and wrong.  There is no scientific proof for morality.  Whitman put it best in his poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.”: 

“…When the proofs , the figures, were ranged in columns before me,/ When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide and measure them/ When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,/ how soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,/ Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,/  In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time,/ Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.” 

What the reader gathers from this is that in life how a thing works isn’t always what matters, but rather the journey and the experience and the fact that it does work.  Science likes to tell us why a tree is green or what makes it sway in the wind, but sometimes the real question is, “why does it matter?”  When you work out your algebra the only important thing is the function.  The work is only there to lead you to the answer.  Without the answer algebra is a failure.  With literature the journey is the point and no answer is right or wrong because your interpretation is the answer.  Whether you are sad at the deaths of Romeo and Juliet or you find yourself touched by the beauty of their love you are correct.  Just as Whitman did with his astronomer, sometimes we must walk out into the starlight of our own ideas.  Sometimes the stars don’t have to be the “big dipper” just because the charts say that it is. Perhaps tonight the stars will form your own images when you glance up and you will realize that life is all in the perception and that perception is what shapes the world. 

Science teaches us about the stars, but literature provides us with the ability to hold them.  Science teaches us about the trees and flowers and why the bees carry pollen.  Literature reminds us that trees are beautiful and teaches us to smell the flowers.  Science tells us why the sky is blue and explains that clouds are collections of vapor.  Literature tells us that the clouds can be whatever we think they are—that we can walk atop them as if they were dirt and earth.    Science provides us with knowledge to survive in the world around us, but it takes something far greater to make us want to change that world.  I refer to Whitman again from “O me! O Life!”: 

“…of the eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,/ Of the poor results of all…/What good amid these, O me, O life?/ Answer/  That you are here-that life exists and identity,/ That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” 

Those who take to emotional plagiarism might go on to lead normal lives in the shadows of others, not happy, not sad, but not anything that we haven’t seen.  Those who shape the world will be those with the courage to challenge convention… Those who will sound their barbaric YAWPs over the roofs of the world(Whitman).  

Our science is still important.  It will let us build bridges across the unknown to new, great frontiers. But literature, literature is the yearning, pulling desire that makes us wonder what is on the other side.

If I felt this way before I feel it even more so now.  When I wrote this I was a first semester college student who wanted nothing more than to be a writer.  My eyes were misty and clouded with idealism that is still there, but is more guarded than before.  Now I actually see some proof that I could actually succeed as a writer or an artist so these ideas are even more important to me.  I have to battle with the idea, even within myself, that I am pursuing a needless and hopeless path and sometimes this essay reminds me of that idealism that is often pushed to the back.

Anytime I call myself a writer and someone on the VA message board acts offended by my self label of “writer” I just remember that, “I may contribute a verse.”

ARCHIVES

FEEDBACK

Navigation

Links

Flushes

Since 7-13-02