As the story continues and the characters spend more time in the Nautilus, students noted that many of the chapters contain boring lists of different plants and fish they see under the waves. This may surprise those who remember certain iconic moments in the story, such as the attack of the squid and the Nautilus’ attacks of other ships. But many chapters do contain lists of fish and other technical details of undersea life and life at sea.
These portions of the story do not resonate with me very much, and I have sympathy with the student’s reactions. But such portions of the story also give us an opportunity to gain insights into the mind of the author and the times in which he wrote.
We can first note that the story was originally published in installments in a bi-monthly periodical. It is possible that Verne includes such detail merely to lengthen his story and get paid more for publishing more. But the story was a smash hit when it debuted in 1870, and we should surmise that while financial gain may have played a part in this narrative choice, it cannot entirely explain it.
When we get incrongruity between our time and the past, this gives us an opportunity to notice how cultures change over time and what that reveals not just about them, but us as well.
Verne published his book at a time when people generally had
Faith that the future would be better than the past, and
Trust that science, and the increase of knowledge that science would bring, would be the main cause of that progress.
Captain Nemo is a bit of a superior type, and frequently in the story we see him correcting various views held by the enlightened and gentlemanly Prof. Arronax. Nemo’s travels and knowledge give him “the truth” about various historical and especially naval events. The reading public likely heavily bought into the common cutural narrative about the connections between knowledge, power, and progress. The facts obtained by the Professor about the nature of undersea life would likely have been viewed in 1870 not as random data points but priceless treasures that could help mankind advance.
The fact that these sections of the book fall on deaf ears in our day says much about us as well. The 20th century revealed that the power that comes with science has revealed itself as a double-edged sword. The knowledge that can heal us can just as easily be used to destroy us. The cataclysmic conflicts of WW I and WW II taught us this, as did Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But we also no longer trust science as a discipline. Our trust in institutions in general has eroded, which has led to many over the last several years calling into question various things that science was supposed to have settled for us. On the other side of the 20th century, science has lost its charm and its persuasive hold on the culture at large.
One might say that Verne wrote at the “high noon” of the West’s trust in science. At the beginning, trust in science might have needed explained. At the end of an era, science would need defended. Here, in our story, the trust placed in science by all characters is implicit. They are fish who do not know they swim in water.
The embedding of the story in a sea of facts perhaps helps us focus more intently on the main character of the story, the mysterious Captain Nemo.
The other main characters are somewhat stock. They do not change and the character is easily defined.
The Professor wants to learn and discover new things
Conseil (the Professor’s servant) wants to obey his master and classify the Professor’s observations
Ned wants to hunt and eat. At different times in the story, he also wants his freedom.
Captain Nemo is more complex, but Verne also wrote his most famous character after a type, the “Byronic Hero,” named after Lord Byron. Byronic heroes have the following characteristics:
They are socially isolated by their own choice
They have suffered some great, unkown tragedy that has marked them for life
They are intelligent and arrogant
They are highly emotional, and given to violent outbursts of temper
He has significant personality flaws and knows it, making him a “tortured soul.”
The story makes no attempt to explain Captain Nemo’s origin. We can reasonably surmise it involves the death of his family, but otherwise we have only scattered hints. Verne did well to leave Nemo as a sketch instead of a finished portrait. It is the mystery of Nemo, and the questions we have about his actions, that make the story compelling. It says something of our age at least, and perhaps of humanity in general, that we prefer mystery to fact.
We continued with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea this week and got our first introduction to Captain Nemo.
I hope that the students in the class will not only understand the events of the stories we read, but also understand the meaning of events within the story. That is, the students will hopefully learn to see how literature can entertain them but also challenge them to potentially think and see the world differently. This means learning how to read, in the sense of learning how to discern authorial intent within the text.
So, for example, the characters of Professor Arronax, Ned Land, anmd Conseil assert that the crew of the Nautilus are “pirates” multiple times after entering the vessel. Clearly, Verne means to ask the question as to whether or not Nemo should be considered among likes of Blackbeard. The story may reject this notion, but Verne introduces it to us for a reason. He wants us to entertain the possibility.
No one questions that Captain Nemo is the most important and enigmatic character of the story. The fact that Nemo has lived on in our cultural parlance, and that his character has been adopted into other stories, shows that Verne hit the mark with his creation. Before the characters formally meet Nemo, they are introduced to his motto, another clue to its importance in unlocking the meaning of the story. Around the ship the characters see the letter “N” surrounded by the words
Mobilis in Mobili
The phrase can be translated literally as “Moving in a Moving Thing,” but is better captured more colloquially as “moving within motion,” or some also suggest, “changing within change.”
Verne could be described as a writer of popular fiction, but there is a lot to unpack in this phrase as it relates to the story.
Not coincidentally, the phrase is associated with a submarine and a crew that never touches land. They are always within water, which is continuously fluid and changing its shape. So, from a metaphysical point of view, the Nautilus and her crew must always “change within change,” but this continuous flux becomes in itself a new stasis. Land represents stability, and without land, they will need to continuously adapt. This continuous adaptation still produces recognizable patterns.
This lends insight into Nemo’s later assertion that he is bound by no law other than his own. Without the stability of land, there can be no fixed law of conduct. Yet, this continuos change does produce something resembling stability within Nemo’s personality. His law resembles that of civilization, but it still stands slightly askew, and hopefully the students will see this.
The fact that Nemo’s super submarine is called the Nautilus also reveals much. The word choice has several levels of meaning:
In Greek, the word nautilus means simply, “sailor.”
The nautilus is a sea creature within a shell. It is the sole living creature whose bony structure is in fact a shell. The submarine becomes the skin of the crew, an extension of themselves.
Metaphorically, the grooves of the shell spiral downward continuously, a foreshadowing of the end of the book, as well as a metaphor for Nemo’s life. Under the sea, enclosed in the sub, there would be no natural way to measure the passage of time. Without the ability to mark time, one will be in danger of not being able to discern meaning from experience.
The Nautilus offers a kind of luxury and temporary interest for the scholar, Professor Arronax. But for the more normal Ned Land, the sub is nothing more than a prison. Here again Verne wants us to consider not only if meaning requires time, but also if meaning requires stability. Is the world Nemo built enough to sustain him psychologically and morally, or will it leave Nemo only to the whims of his moods?
We will continue to explore these questions as we get into the meat of the story in the following weeks.
Next week we will start our next book for the year, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Verne’s stories captivated the people of his time. Many of his books have been made into movies, which is one measure of cultural resonance. His stories had straightforward plots and generally stock characters, which aided their serialization into the popular magazines of the day. So on one level, I hope that the students enjoy the story as an adventure tale.
But like any great author, a particular worldview informs the work, and the story raises interesting questions for us to consider.
The Relationship Between Technology and Freedom
Verne wrote in the mid-late 19th century, a time of enormous technological change, perhaps a shift greater than what we have experienced the last twenty years or so. The Industrial Revolution not only remade the economy, it shifted how we worked and lived as a society. This period saw the spread of democratic ideals throughout Europe and America as well, and the casting off of traditional institutions and ideas. Elites across the western world lost a great deal of status, which culminated in World War I. So one the one hand, the growth of political freedom and technology went hand in hand.
Yet in our day, we see that the relationship between technology and freedom is not so straightforward. Our phones give us immediate access to information everywhere, but they also track us and have a way of fixating our attention. Computers allow us to be more creative and productive at work but this also means that work can follow us anywhere at anytime. Cars allow us to roam with more speed and flexibility than at any previous time in history but they break down frequently and require us to work long hours to maintain them.
This paradox is not confined to our day. For example, most saw the obvious benefits of the Industrial Revolution in the abundance of goods at cheaper prices for a great mass of people. In very real ways, the standard of living went up. To achieve this, millions of people had to work menial, robotically repetitive jobs in factories for 12-14 hours a day.
In Verne’s story, Captain Nemo consciously sought to free himself from the constraints of civilization’s laws and mores, and takes to the sea . . . where he spends his life confined in a metal shell. The Nautilus gives and takes away from Nemo and his crew in equal measure. We shall explore this relationship as we read.
The Relationship Between Man and Society
We often define freedom as the absence of constraints, i.e., no one tells me what to eat for lunch, or what movie to see, or who to vote for. In this respect Nemo and his crew are “free.” But as already noted, this form of freedom comes with a price. Philosophers and theologians outline another view of freedom, one where the constraints put upon us actually aid us in achieving our proper ends as men and women. For example, a train is certainly constrained by the tracks on which it moves. Yet those very constraints help the train be what it what it was created to be. Without tracks, a train cannot fulfill its proper “end,” or (to use Aristotle’s phrase) “telos.” A train sitting in the woods has no freedom to be a train.
So too, our families, communities, and our country certainly put constraints upon us. Children and adults alike resent them at times. We might rather play the video game than do our homework. We might rather finish our movie than clean the kitchen or change the diaper of a crying child. On a societal level, our politicians can annoy and disappoint us, and we may pine for other lands where the grass seems greener. Captain Nemo is the classic “tortured soul” that our culture has trained us to admire. We can certainly appreciate Nemo’s courage, intelligence, and devotion to his crew. But we need to see how Nemo’s separation from civilization has also warped his sensibilities. Our connections to those around us shape who we are, and without them, we are left with the freedom of the void.
Many business leaders, politicians, and the like, reflect that it is “lonely at the top.” I remember my pastor in college confiding to me that most all of his truly good friends were other pastors. They shared a common bond that others cannot quite relate to. So too, a ship’s captain will likely find the highest level of kinship with other captains. But because Nemo has severed ties with the world, he cut himself off from the possibility of that kinship. He has his ship, his books, and his studies, to comfort him.
This week we began our first reading of Machiavelli, one of the more controversial and intriguing political thinkers in history. I hope that the students will find him enjoyable and thought provoking.
Machiavelli comes with a reputation. To say that someone is “Machiavellian,” means that they are conniving, amoral, and without scruple. His most famous work, The Prince seems to famously advocate that “the ends justify the means,” another phrase from which many of us shrink.
Students are welcome to their opinion of Machiavelli, whatever that might be. But first we have to make sure we understand him first if we want to reject him.
First, we can tackle the troubling phrase, “the ends justify the means.” As a categorical absolute, this statement makes no sense. It makes as little sense as its opposite, “No ends justify the means.” This phrase usually means means that anything that one does to achieve a legitimate goal is justified. But even the most extreme devotee of this idea would not say that anything one does to achieve a goal be within bounds. When faced with an “end,” such as discovering buried treasure, we realize that some means would be justified to find it, and some would not. So context matters.
For example, if a single guy on sabbatical from his job with some money to burn wanted to take a few weeks to run around the globe in search of treasure, most would think that fine. If a family man on a tight budget did the same thing, we would raise an eyebrow and question the proportionality of the end and its means.
Machiavelli never directly said, “the ends justify the means,” but it is true that, while he recognized context and limits, he willingly expanded the boundaries of ends and means in ways not explored previously.*
Machiavelli did not invent poltical science as a discipline, but he did found its modern incarnation. Previous to Machiavelli, political thinkers started with an “absolute,” a particular idea of the good. They then sought to have the state in question molded to that absolute idea. For Plato, this meant the world of the Forms. For Aristotle, this was Nature. But other civilizations followed along this model. Medieval society, for example, had as its guiding star the phrase “on earth as it is in heaven,” and sought to model their political order around the heavenly order of seraphim, archangels, angels, and the like. Ancient Egypt looked back to a mythic past of harmony and balance, and Pharaoh’s ruled in attempt to recreate this balance, which they called Ma’at. Many other examples exist.
Machiavelli started from the other end. He wanted rulers to look at the situation they faced in real time first and not concern themselves with “ideals” not immediately relevant to their experience. But that is not to say that Machiavelli had no “end” in view. He wanted the Prince to stay in power, but not, I think, for the sake of power itself, but to bring about stability. Stability in itself was a worthy aim, because its lack would almost assuredly usher in violence on a broad scale.
In The Prince Machiavelli deals with various scenarios in which a ruler might strengthen or jeopardize his ability to stay in power.
Our first example involved what Machiavelli described as a “Mixed State.” Let us suppose you have a country (Redland) in which you have a Redland ruler with Redland people. Unfortunately their king is incompetent or destructive in his rule in some way. This leads to some in Redland to conspire with the king of Blueland to come in to Redland, and take over Redland for himself. Taking Redland would be relatively easy. After all, the fight is not fair, and it is not fair in your favor. Blueland’s army has to fight Redland’s army, but Blueland also has the assistance those within Redland who actively conspire to get you to take over, so your victory is quite likely.
But once Blueland takes over Redland, Blueland’s ruler will face many problems quickly, in fact, more problems than if they defeated them “straight up.”
For one, Blueland has to reward those in Redland who helped you to win. But how much should one trust such people? If you don’t reward them, they will turn against you just as they turned against their previous ruler. If you reward them too much, you will alienate your own army, as well as strengthen those who have already proved untrustworthy to their ruler.
If Redland has a different culture, customs, and language than Blueland, you will face additional problems (Machiavelli cites the example of Louis XII of France who quickly conquered, and then quickly lost, the city-state of Milan). Ideally, you can get away with changing as little as possible (mimicking the general policy of the Romans and Cyrus the Great of Persia). If you make the mistake of introducing new forms of taxation on the conquered people to pay for your conquest, you start the clock on your expiration date as the new king of Redland.
So far Machiavelli merely analyzes the problems. This aspect of Machiavelli is not what makes him controversial.
The controversy comes in what follows. A commentator from another era might have then said, “So, we see that Blueland should not conquer Redland even if invited in by a Redland faction.” Machiavelli essentially says, “If you find yourself in a position akin to the king of Blueland, how do you then maintain your power?” He does not concern himself with the morality of the conquest, but supposes the conquest as a thing that happened. The question then becomes, “What do I do now?” rather than “What should I have done?” Some argue he goes farther, and in effect tells rulers how to do the wrong thing and get away with it. Personally I don’t go this far in my reading of Machiavelli, but I understand how others might. Regardless of what we think of what Machiavelli is doing, he certainly puts the emphasis on the pragmatic over the ideal.
He lays out the options:
If you withdraw entirely from Redland and effectively say, “Whoops, my mistake,” there will be chaos not only in Redland but also among your own people in Blueland, as you will look like an idiot who puts his hand to the plow but doesn’t see it through. You might lose power in both places. Again, rulers might want to keep their power for selfish reasons, but amidst political chaos, violence increases and many suffer. So withdrawal from Redland would likely help no one.
What most attempt is some kind of half-measure, where you try to govern your new territory from Blueland and find yourself continually frustrated. This would be akin to trying to babysit toddlers via Zoom. It wouldn’t go so well.
Most are not willing to do one of the two things that at this point must be done. You can either 1) Occupy Redland, or 2) Destroy Redland and repopulate it with people from Blueland.
Both paths come with problems. Occupying Redland will be expensive, and requires a great deal of energy and determination. Do you have the money and patience for this? Most do not.**
The quickest and easiest solution is to burn the territory and scatter the populace. Then, you resettle the land with your own people. This saves you the cost of paying your army for years on end, and gets all the bad stuff out of the way right at the start. The Normal Conquest of 1066, for example, largely fits this pattern. This obviously involves a lot pain and suffering for people in the short term. But it actually creates long term stability. Better to rip off the band-aid in one go than to prolong uncertainty and instability for decades.
Is this “the ends justifies the means?” Yes, and no. He does not counsel that Blueland should have invaded in the first place. He does argue that once Blueland has gotten their hands on a “Mixed State,” they have only bad choices in front of them. The best of the bad choices is the “morally correct” one, the choice that 1) Preserves stability in the long run, and 2) Deals quickly and decisively with the problem.
Again, Machiavelli differs from previous political theorists in that, while those before Machiavelli directed their ideas toward a particular end or goal, be it Nature, Heaven, a Golden Age, Machiavelli has it both ways. Like the Roman god Janus, he has two faces, not just one.
I look forward to seeing how the students will react to Machiavelli’s approach as the year continues.
Dave
*Our squeamishness about “the ends justify the means” is exposed somewhat in our love of stories where a man has something horrible happen to his friends or family, and then goes on a rampage to get his daughter back, or avenge his partner’s death, or something like this. Most often these movie heroes cause a great deal more destruction than they themselves experienced, but we cheer them on anyway.
**The Romans grew their power in Italy largely through this method, which requires extraordinary patience and conviction of purpose, something Machiavelli does not mention, though perhaps he does elsewhere.
Those who say that all great literature lends itself to multiple interpretations speak truly . . . up to a point. Great stories have a points of tension in them, both for the characters and the reader. But the variety of interpretations is not infinite. Among other things. our interpretations should be constrained by the text, and we should look for clues in the text–and the worldview from which the author wrote–to clue us in on how we should read the story. Part of being a good reader involves being a good person. You listen and seek to understand. You show willingness to take the author seriously and refrain from imposing one’s own agenda on the story.
Part of our problem in following this advice is that we live in a time in love with ambiguity. One need only look at the plethora of stories in which we are encouraged to take the side of those we formerly thought of as villains, who have been “tragically wronged and misunderstood” (such as the movies Cruella, or Wicked, or even Shrek) for example. Other controversial historians suggest that maybe Churchill was the “real” bad guy of World War II. Others indulge in Holocaust denial. The list could go on. In short, we don’t like our narratives neat and tidy anymore. This is very likely not a sign of sophistication, but of boredom. We don’t have the strength, as Chesterton noted, to see the sun come up every day and rejoice like a little child, and say “Do it again!”*
In earlier ages of any civilization, one usually sees more confidence, with stories that avoid inversion. The Song of Roland is one of these kinds of stories. That’s not to say that it never asks questions or paints its characters all one color. The trick is knowing how to read the story like a person of that time would read it, to see where we have solidity and where the narrative is open to interpretation.
For example, Shakespeare’s Hamlet has many points in the story around which the narrative turns. First and perhaps foremost is the ghostly appearance of Hamlet’s father. Most moderns take it as a given that Hamlet should act as the ghost commands, and it is his failure to act that condemns him. But if we give credence to the Christian context in which Shakespeare wrote, we see that
Hamlet’s father (if it is his father) insists that Hamlet commit murder to avenge him and give his spirit peace. Murder and vengeance to help someone in the afterlife does not sound like sound Christian doctrine to me.
The ghost’s appearance involves the upending of the natural order, turning night to day.
Hamlet’s friends are all either afraid or deeply skeptical of the ghost. They urge Hamlet not to listen. Hamlet ignores them.
The ghost is associated with sulphur and torment in the text. This is not a particularly subtle point about the origins of the ghost.
Hamlet ultimately following the ghost’s advice leads to the overthrow of the kingdom and the death of most everyone around him.
There are plenty of points open for debate about Hamlet, as it is one of the great plays of western civilization. But how we should view the ghost is not one of them. We have a place to begin.**
The basic narrative of The Song of Roland runs as follows:
Charlemagne has conquered much of Spain, but has one remaining stronghold to tackle. His army is weary, so perhaps he could make a deal rather than fight?
Marsiliun (the pagan holdout king) is also looking for a way to avoid all out war with Charlemagne, but he doesn’t want to lose his honor and merely surrender.
Ganelon, insulted (perhaps legitimately, perhaps not) by Roland, conceives of a plan. He goes to Marsiliun and offers to trick Charlemagne and get him to leave only a portion of his force in Spain while the rest of his army retreats.
Ganelon puts a cherry on top and also ensures that Roland and the cream of Charlemagne’s army will remain behind. Marsiliun can then attack and overwhelm Charlemagne’s vastly outnumbered rear guard, which will cripple Charlemagne’s army for good.
The story has moments when both Ganelon and Marsiliun are given praise for various traits, such as courage, nobility, and cleverness. Ah, we moderns might think, might Charlemagne, that vicious conqueror, be the true villain? Perhaps Ganelon really was wronged and got his just revenge on Roland?
There is a point in the story, however, when the author expresses his thoughts in a way quite possibly obscure to us, but absolutely clear to the medieval mind. This happens with the dream of Charlemagne in lines 725-36. In his vision, Charlemagne sees a boar and a leopard attack him. From within the castle comes a large hound, who begins fighting both the boar and the leopard.
For us, when we see an animal, we see its physical characteristics and classify it accordingly. We may ascribe some meaning to the animal, such as “dog’s are man’s best friend,” or that cat’s are enigmatic, but we tacitly assume that these meanings are not inherent to the animal, but imposed somewhat arbitrarily by culture, and hence not entirely “real.” The medievals had the opposite approach. They started with meaning first, and then went to physicial characteristics. When they saw an animal, they first saw what it signified in the spiritual life, and then saw its particular physical attributes.
In Charlemagne’s vision we have three animals:
The boar–the boar was of course a pig, and pigs in Scripture were unclean. Pigs were emblematic of those who wallow in filth (sin) and have no discernment about what they eat (i.e., they are driven wholly by appetite and have no moderation). But, no question, boars could be fierce and courageous beasts. Hunting a stag might mean an enjoyable afternoon. But hunting boar was a serious, dangerous business. Marsiliun is the boar, the dangerous pagan king. He is admired for his ferocity and courage, but he cannot change and cannot repent. He must be hunted and destroyed.
The leopard–the medievals saw the leopard as the result of “adultery” between the lion (leo) and the “pard” (perhaps the panther?). This might account for the mixed, spotted coat of the leopard. The leopard will therefore be cunning and treacherous. The leopard lives in “two worlds” but is at home in neither. Thus, Ganelon is the leopard, the traitor, the one who cannot be praised either as an honest, valiant pagan or a “clean” Christian knight. He is not “misunderstood.” He is the story’s greatest villain.
The dog, which requires a fuller treatment below.
The medievals caught both the spiritual ambiguity of the dog in Scripture and Jewish tradition, as well observing how dogs behaved. On the one hand, against dogs, you have
Dogs are often associated with corpses and refuse
False prophets are sometimes called “dogs”
Dogs eat blood (I Ki 21:19) and return to their own vomit.
But . . .
The Book of Tobit has a dog as a faithful companion and guardian, akin to the archangel Raphael.
In Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, it is a dog who stays faithful to Lazarus, and “heals” him through the licking of his wounds.
In the story of Canaanite woman who agrees to be a “dog” and receive “scraps,” Jesus commends her faith and humility.
In short, dogs came to be viewed positively overall, even if they were a bit wild. Still, it was their tenacious loyalty and obedience that won over the medieval heart.
Roland is the dog in the vision. Here we have both “firmness” and ambiguity in the story. Roland is the good guy. But as the story states, he is a bit wild and uncouth. He is absolutely faithful and displays a true humility of service. It is also true that things might have gone better for everyone in the story if he was a little smarter, and if he could match Ganelon’s cunning. But then, if Roland had these qualities, he would not be a “dog.” He would not be the Roland we know.
Ambiguity in our stories can make them interesting and can test our particular way of seeing the world. But if we don’t know how to see a text as its original audience heard it, we will simply be left in the worst place of all–our own particular predilections and prejudices. We will be stuck in our time and place.
This post here further explores ancient and medieval dog symbolism, for those who wish a deeper dive.
Have a great weekend,
Dave
*The actual quote is, “The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is not due to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say “Do it again”, and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.”
**I know that many will disagree with me about this, and I am not a Shakespeare expert. But one counter people put forward to the ghost’s possibly benign intentions is that Hamlet muses whether or not the ghost be from Heaven or Hell. This is no evidence at all. Hamlet is not a reliable narrator. He might actually be crazy. This might be the secret reason why he was not made king after his father’s death. This could be an interesting point of contention. Maybe Hamlet is a depressive nutcase from the very beginning! Again, I’m all about tension, interpretation, and ambiguity in great literature, but we need to look for clues as to where to find it.
WIth this blog I hope to keep you updated on some aspects of our class. I will not convey everything about our week, but hope to give you insight into some of the main points of focus and discussion. I hope you find this helpful.
Our summer reading was Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, his most famous and best beloved story. The plot is simple, perhaps almost aburdly simple. A poor, elderly fisherman named Santiago journeys out on his skiff. He hooks and fights a huge marlin for three days. He eventually lands the fish, but then has the problem of getting it back to shore intact. As he rows back to shore, sharks come and eat the fish, leaving him with nothing but its skeleton when he lands. But Santiago remains content. He is a fisherman and has done what a fisherman should do. He knows who he is.
Hemingway’s story has several important themes, such as man vs. nature, and the essence of human life, dignity, and identity. But at the heart of the story is a paradox, rooted both in Hemingway’s style of writing, and in his development (or lack thereof) of his main character, Santiago.
First, his style of writing . . .
Many credit Hemingway, along with Mark Twain, of pioneering a distinctively American style of writing. He uses simple sentences and simple words, at times writing in a somewhat offhand, stream of consciousness. He rarely if ever introduces large metaphysical or theological questions. What you see is what you get. In this way, Hemingway’s writing mimics the plain, open approach of the common man. Many famous commentators, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, see Americans as primarily doers, not thinkers. Hemingway doesn’t argue, but rather leans into this conception of American identity.
Hemingway may not have invented his particular style, but he pioneered a concept of writing called Iceberg Theory. His approach allows the reader only to see the surface of the characters–what one can observe in “real life.” Most authors give the reader insight into the character’s thoughts and inner life. Hemingway rarely grants this insight. For the most part, the reader gets to observe the characters but is limited to seeing their actions and words. In this way, Hemingway presents his readers with something more realistic. In real life when we observe others we would not have omniscent access to their thoughts and motivations. Hemingway writes in the same. Of course his characters have deep seated motivations just like any person, but they remain below the surface. We have to guess as to what lies beneath.
Herein lies the paradox of Heminway’s style, which is both transparent and opaque all at once.
On the one hand,
Hemingway’s writing reflects everyday reality that all experience all the time. His writing is “common” and “relatable” in this sense.
His plots and his characters are open books, making them, in a certain sense at least, easily understandable to anyone.
On the other hand,
While we can easily discern the plot of the story, without access to the character’s inner life we have no easy way to determine why anything happens. This is no coincidence, as Hemingway seemed much more interested in the “what” than the “why.” “Why” questions are burdensome and hinder one from living fully.
This in turn, means that an author lauded for his humble and transparent prose can write stories that confuse his readers. Many of the students, for example, perfectly understood the plot but had “no idea what happened.” With this comment, they meant that they had no idea what the story meant, or how they might apply it to their lives.
We can push further, and see how Hemingway mirrors the paradox of American individualism and society as a whole. Many foreign visitors to America are surprised by the frank openness of most Americans they encounter. Frew other countries are as immediately transparent with those outside of their community as are Americans. But Americans are also much less communal than people in most other countries. Our suburbs, technology, and habits isolate us from one another. Both of these observations can be true at once.
The character of Santiago perfectly melds with Hemingway’s style of writing. Santiago constantly reminds himself throughout the story to stop thinking, and focus on the moment in front of him. He is a beloved figure in his village. But at the same time, he lives alone, with no family and no direct connections to the village around him. He has one friend, but in keeping with the “Hemingway paradox,” this friend is a much younger boy. The boy loves Santiago, but of course, cannot really relate to him or connect with him.
This coming Monday, the students will discuss some aspects of this paradox in our first formal discussion.
It is sometimes possible to enjoy a book that one cannot understand very much of, provided that
The author has a great deal of fun with the subject, and
The author clearly and deeply understands the subject, which allows him to express his ideas clearly.
I confess to knowing nothing about almost all of the authors CS Lewis discusses in his wonderful English Literature of the Sixteenth Century. Anecdotes exist that indicate Lewis felt real heaviness and irritation in cranking this one out, but this does not come across in the writing. It reads light as a feather. Lewis generously shares his opinions about literature, but mixes these opinions with a marbling of philosophy, history, and cultural analysis. All this makes Lewis’ work come alive and relevant for today. This is some of Lewis’ best writing, and his wit and humor shine on most every page.
Lewis finds this era worthy of extended examination because it stands at a nexus of a variety of momentous shifts:
The early 16th century saw the last vestiges of the medieval worldview have their final say
The early-mid 16th century saw the high water mark of Renaissance humanism and classicism
The entire 16th century saw tumultuous religious upheaval caused by the Reformation, followed on by the Counter-Reformation.
Lewis keeps his focus on the literature, as is proper, but his opening chapters also set the stage historically and culturally. For the historian, Lewis goes to great lengths to reset the balance between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but I have covered that topic elsewhere. His basic point for in these opening chapters involves prepping us for the fact that literature at a nexus of cultural death and rebirth tends not to be very good. Things eventually sorted themselves out with Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare, but the early to middle part of the century left much to be desired. The main fault of the writers of this time involved a hyper-exaggeration of a certain strengths of cultural movements, which robbed much of their writing of life and merit.
To be sure, the political, cultural and religious tumult eventually settled into a new equilibrium, and after that, writers could borrow from different literary genres much more freely and productively, but until that happened, very little of anything transcendent value got written.
This dynamic makes sense to us if we scale down this larger point to something more tangible to our own experience of, for example, adolescence. Our early teen years involve an ending of childhood and the beginning of something else, akin to a larger scale cultural breakdown and rebirth in our immediate personal experience.
I grew up playing drums and listening to a lot of my dad’s music. This was a pre-headphone era, so we all heard what he played on the living room stereo. I got a healthy dose of the Beatles, Otis Redding, Willie Nelson, and Beethoven, among others. I enjoyed almost all of it. But as a 16 year old drummer, I wanted something else (unfortunately it took a few more years before I appreciated Ringo and Al Jackson), and a way to distinguish myself. One day, my cousin’s friend played for me the opening 30 seconds of Rush’s “The Spirit of Radio,” and it was all over for me. I was enchanted. I had never heard progressive rock, so I dove in headfirst. I immediately went to Tower Records and bought Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, and Hemispheres.* For the next year, I then decided that everything about my drumming, and many other things about my life besides, must conform to Neil Peart’s particular style.
This improved my drumming in certain small ways but ruined it in others. Things got misshapen. If one believes (as I did), that even when drumming for my high school jazz band I should act like Neil Peart, you sound like an idiot. It took hearing a recording of my playing at the county jazz festival, and the judges comments, to make me realize I needed to snap out of it. I spent the following summer listening Glenn Miller and Count Basie, and at least partially fixed things for my senior year.
This was a classic, “It’s not you, it’s me,” problem. Neil Peart has much to teach any drummer, but not if you become enslaved to his aura. In that state, one plays drums essentially to convince an audience, and you lose all sense of proportion.
Times of personal and cultural death and rebirth offer many opportunities. In separating certain aspects of life from a larger context, we can see them with more clarity, and this is exciting. I’d like to think that in college, I could throw in occasional progressive wrinkles without being bound by them. Unfortunately our internal instability in those moments of initial discovery make it very difficult for us to take fruitful advantage of whatever insights we gain. The same applies to a culture at large. In the midst of breakdown, when things come apart, we notice what we had never seen before. This is great as far it goes, but it has to kept in balance.
Lewis shows us how this dynamic plays out in the literature of the period.
Oftentimes, what seems like an era in the fullness of its strength actually ends up being something akin to “terminal lucidity,” a burst of energy many dying patients experience before passing. For example, the 1980’s seemed like the crest of a wave of American confidence. We had Reagan-era optimism. We won the Cold War. We grew economically. We wore bright colors and made our hair big. But look again, and we see that some of what we were about shows an uncomfortable exaggeration of a theme. We should never have attempted, for example, “Hands Across America.” Big hair is one thing, and glam-metal fashion ca. 1988 quite another.
This “hyper-extension” of cultural posturing naturally collapsed, leading to completely opposite atmosphere. Now we had grunge music with lyrics about how bad things were, loose clothes (anyone who tucked in their shirt at my high school in 1990 would have been hopelessly labeled as a nerd), and “heroin chic.”
In neither era do men or women look particularly normal, with both exaggerating certain ideas to a point of being ridiculous.**
I much prefer medieval literature to that of the Renaissance, but by the end of the Middle Ages, we saw the same kind of unfortunate exaggerations. Lewis suggests that Scotland’s king James IV perfectly encapsulates the problem with the period. “Peak” medieval chivalry ca. 1350 had much to commend it. It ennobled men, and greatly elevated the status of women.^ The courtly love tradition had its good parts, though the best literature of the period grappled with some of the contradictions and tensions involved in knightly service of ladies. The literary figure of Lancelot encapsulates this well.
James IV (b. 1473, d. 1513) had many good qualities. He was open hearted, high spirited, and generous in the best spirit of chivalry. He had courage, but a variety of contemporaries remarked that he had too much courage to be king. He needed more prudence and policy. Many of his contemporaries felt that James never should have fought the Battle of Flodden, where he met his death (in Henry IV, Pt. 1 Shakespeare may have had James IV as a model in mind for Hotspur). As to the service of ladies, James IV almost parodies the medieval complexity and tension by abandoning himself to countless prostitutes and fathering a variety of illegitimate children. His exaggerated chivalric ideals made chivalry itself look ridiculous.
So too, late medieval literature had little balance and often none of the sense of play of the best medieval prose from previous decades. Lewis cites the work of John Fisher, who drank heavily from the medieval moral sense, but alas, could not let an idea go once he fixed himself upon it. In his The Perfect Religion, he instructs a nun to be
Grateful for being created to live in a Christian society. As Lewis states, this is well and proper. But Fisher continues, telling the nun to be
Grateful for being created at all. This is still a good sentiment, but perhaps was already covered in the first injunction? Fisher doesn’t stop there, however, urging that she remain
Grateful that she was created as a human being, and not a toad, and tops this off with the counsel that
She be grateful that she was created instead of all the other people that might have been created instead of her.
Lewis rightly points out that by the third injunction, Fisher has descended into absurdity (“she” could never be a toad—not an option for a human being,) and by the fourth, a work intended to promote Catholic orthodoxy seems to promote a gnostic heresy of the pre-existence of souls and the separation of the body from personhood. Lewis writes, “Fisher’s sincerity is undoubted, but his intellect is not as hard at work as he supposes. We can’t hold Fisher accountable for not answering his questions, but he doesn’t seem to know that he is raising them.”
This lack of balance spilled over into the religiously polemical works of Fisher and Thomas More. Both wrote defenses of purgatory, and both in their zeal latched onto certain rogue strands of late-medieval asceticism. In Dante, the souls in Purgatory sing psalms joyfully, and their bodies suffer in service of redemption, and is in fact an integral part of their redemption. For Fisher and More, we have denigration of the body, so that the purgation is for the sake of purgation itself, and their vision of purgatory means a practically pointless circle of suffering.
We should expect this tendency to exaggeration during times of cultural fragmentation. What was once solid now moves apart. The bell curve of ABC, CBS, and NBC turns into a thousand scattered points, first with cable news, then with the internet. When this scattering happens, we naturally lose our bearings and find what we can to latch onto. What we latch onto, however, will be isolated from a larger context, and thus will lose its relationship to the broader whole.
I have mentioned two late-medieval/early modern Catholics, now for some early Reformation humanists (though it was certainly possible to be a Catholic humanist, i.e. Erasmus). John Colet wished to return to a more pure age, and thus urged a strict “anti-body,” morality upon his readers. He saw no real difference between marital union and fornication, and in fact wished that no one would get married. Marriage and the body proved to messy for his taste. He acknowledged that no marriage would mean the end of the human race on earth, but oh well, these things happen.
The humanists loved classical culture, either for its perceived purity, hardy innocence, or merely because the classical age was not feudal and medieval, the worst of all sins. This meant that he abandoned allegorical or symbolic interpretations of the Bible in search of a platonic “pure” meaning of the text. Others shared these views, but his thoughts on the subject of Latin take him into absurdity in a similar way to Fisher. On the one hand, as mentioned, he was a strict moralist with gnostic tendencies. This led to a distrust of much of pagan literature. On the other, he hated all things medieval, and that meant hating medieval church Latin, which had been “corrupted” from the past that was pure, not in morality, perhaps, but in its use of language. Lewis writes,
{For Colet] the spirit of the classical writers was to be avoided like the plague, and their form to be imposed as an indispensable law. When he founded St. Paul’s school, the boys were to be guarded from every word that did not occur in Vergil or Cicero, and equally, from every idea that did. No more deadly or irrational scheme could have been propounded. Deadly, because it cut the boys off from all the best literature in the Latin world, and irrational, because it put absurd value on certain arbitrary elements dissociated from the spirit which begot them, and for whose sake they existed. For Colet, this seemed a small price to pay for excluding all barbarism, all corruption, all “adulterated” Latin.
We noted above that when something reaches its end, it can mimic strength through one final, exaggerated effort. It might seem on the one hand that Latin had no greater champion than Colet, who sought to emphasize only the “best” Latin. But Lewis points out that all of the efforts of the Renaissance humanists to preserve the purity of latin in fact killed it. A variety of medieval people actually spoke latin (churchmen and merchants), or at least some version of latin. Only a very few scholars knew classical Latin, and fewer still spoke it, and then only in the academy. The attempt to save Latin destroyed it.
It is usually more fun to read a review where the critic pans rather than praises. I have focused on the first half of the book, where the literature, with a few exceptions, stunk. But we should remember that the century ended with some of England’s greatest writers, and with Shakespeare we have an “all-timer.” When we recall Shakespeare’s best work, we see how much more comfortable he was with tension and play than the previous generation. He incorporated medieval and modern elements without going out of his way to defend either. Stylistically, he stuck to certain meters and forms, but not all the time. He could happily dance between them. His characters are rich, both particular to his time and universal.
This can give us hope for our own future. We live in an era where many of the old categories of meaning and belonging have vanished. As a result we see the same kinds of intensification and exaggeration that beset the 16th century. But they learned, and so might we. The path forward comes from Thomas More’s most famous and least understood work, his Utopia. As mentioned previously, Lewis felt that much of More’s polemical work fell prey to the vices of the age. Those vices, he argues, cloud our perception of Utopia. Many moderns attempt to find a point to the work, obscured or otherwise, that will clue us in to More’s meaning in the text. Much of More’s other work had a definite argument. So too must Utopia, right? Was More secretly supporting communism, or was he a closet Protestant? Or perhaps he sought to make some other political point buried in code?
Lewis points out, however, that any attempt to pin the book down specifically one way or another will fail, because More writes in this text like a medieval. Given that medievalism was practically dead at this point, it is no wonder that even his contemporaries remained confused. But Lewis argues the book has no particular point. It’s meant as a romp of this and that, no more, no less. The medievals loved to bandy ideas about and put them in tension and opposition to one another. For them, this was fun–and that signifies of a more healthy age than either our own or the early 16th century. They were more interested in play, we in logical, deductive writing that makes a point and gets somewhere definite.
For us, as for the 16th century, the way out of our predicament involves not stronger arguments, but a greater sense of fun. More shows us that even politics, whatever our position may be, can bear the weight of humor in any age.
*I also bought what was at that time their most recent album, Hold Your Fire. Rush fans may relate to my utter shock, bewilderment, and even anger at going from “Red Barchetta” to “Time Stand Still” in the space of 30 seconds. To this day I still feel that Hold Your Fire is a ridiculous album. Not until Counterparts would I start to forgive them.
**At first glance no two things could seem further apart than the late 80’s and early 90’s aesthetic. But both participate in the same cultural breakdown, and are likely, therefore to share some crucial commonalities. A second glance shows that, surprise, surprise, they have androgyny in common. In glam metal, a lot of guys dressed similarly to women (tight pants, makeup, etc.) and in grunge, a lot women looked like men (short hair, lack of showering, no care for appearance, etc.) No doubt grunge devotees would have been horrified to learn that they shared a crucial similarity with hair metal, but there you go.
In one section of the book, Lewis shows that Thomas More (Catholic) and William Tyndale (Protestant), who wrote page after page attacking one another, actually had a lot in common. Both had similar economic ideas. And on Henry VIII annulment and remarriage to Anne Boleyn, the hot-button issue of the day, they were in lock-step agreement. Both seem to have missed this fact at the time.
^For an example of this, note the famous story from Froissart about how Edward III heeded his wife’s call for clemency for the population of Calais.
A Stick in the Mud 