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Literature and Solidarity : After Black Tuesday

© Shaun Michael Jex

Originally, as I sat down to write my second article on literary theory I had planned to once again focus on abstract theory, aspects of Deconstruction and Reader Response. However while trying to put together an interesting article I was ripped away by the events of Black Tuesday, and suddenly abstract theory seemed trite, silly for the moment, something to be considered later. In the same moment, the importance of literature became a looming visage, larger than even I had considered it. It became something pragmatic, something unifying, it contained the potential to help create human solidarity, as Richard Rorty put it.

To begin it is essential to differentiate types of literature, while philosophy and abstract theory are both forms of literature, in this article I will be focusing on fiction. Where philosophy is an attempt to define a subjective truth, the art of fiction is a mimetic one and therefore reflects the human condition. Fiction, when written correctly, serves as a common thread between all people, given that we all in some sense share common values, fears, all suffer and all take joy in things that are relatively similar. One can see in novels such as 1984 by George Orwell, or The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck themes that could essentially be termed archetypes. They help portray struggles and emotions that are common throughout the world, and thus are not merely limited to one particular lingual or cultural group.

It is not so important, or even relevant, that a novel capture a particular truth about human nature or life, or that it teach some grand moral. What is essential in the book, is to depict human nature, to show rather than to teach. To reveal what formerly appeared to be alien to people, to in actuality be similar. One can easily understand the value of such a thing, as it is generally understood that prejudice, acts of violence and other such things take place when the individual or group feels that they are challenging the "other". It is then, the crowning and perhaps most important function of literature to erase the boundaries of the other, to show instead that the "other" does not exist.

It is quiet an old aphorism to say that the pen is mightier than the sword, but it still remains true, while weapons can only destroy people, words can help to bind them together, to unify them. I have in this article attempted not to be too reactionary, too over sentimental, but in the realm of theory and of life, perhaps it really is the pragmatic that is of the most importance, even in fiction and the arts.

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