Better Watch Whom You Call a “Monster”

Readers of the Old English epic poem Beowulf are asked to accept at face value that the accursed Grendel, the larger-than-life beast who has been terrorizing King Hrothgar’s mead-hall for a dozen years, is a monster.  And most of us easily accept this designation.  After all, Grendel’s pretty darn big and scary, and he’s capable of making a meal out of more than one brawny Dane at a time.  In his 1971 novel Grendel, on the other hand, John Gardner asks readers to take a second look at this so-called “monster” and offers us an opportunity to see the world through Grendel’s eyes.  The result is quite instructive, and it doesn’t take long to see that what really makes Grendel the monster he becomes is not his size or capacity for deadly deeds.  Rather it is the very decision of the men around him that he is monstrous that turns him into the murderous creature we meet in the epic poem.

The very first time Gardner’s Grendel meets humans he is stuck in a tree, and without any provocation, the men end up attacking him.  Curiosity about these strange attackers leads Grendel not to seek revenge but to a near obsession with observing the lives of King Hrothgar and his people.  And their second interaction is even more tragic.  Listening outside the mead-hall to a song by the bard, a song which identifies Grendel with “the dark side,” he rushes into the crowd shouting “Mercy! Peace!” and drops to his knees crying “Friend!  Friend!”  only to be met with spears and battle axes.

The epic poem never shows us Grendel’s perspective; in Gardner’s version, it is the response of society which turns Grendel into the monster they believe him to be.  In other words, Grendel grows into the label that’s been given to him.  Reading this novel with a student recently, I was reminded of reading early on my teacher education courses about a phenomenom called “labeling,” in which students respond to being labeled by conforming to behavior expectations associated with the label.  Not such a bad thing if the label is something like “gifted” or “hard worker.”  But anyone who is raising kids or teaching needs to be mindful every single day of the power we wield in their young lives:  being stuck by parents or teachers with a negative or stigmatized label can be devastating to a child.

Why Read the Classics

“Why read the classics rather than concentrate on books that enable us to understand our own times more deeply?” “Where shall we find the time and peace of mind to read the classics, overwhelmed as we are by the avalanche of current events?”  Italian writer Italo Calvino (1923-1985) offers compelling answers to these questions in a marvelous essay entitled “Why Read the Classics?” To answer this If you love books, you’ll love Calvino’s essay.

This Scylla and Charybdis of questions feels even more prescient today—with all of our electronics and social media squawking for our attention—than in 1981, when Calvino first published his essay.  To answer the question, Calvino imagines “some blessed soul” who has nothing to do but sit around and read great books all day “without having to write reviews for of the latest publications, or papers to compete for university chairs, or articles for magazines on tight deadlines.”  Or, we might add, diapers to change, baseball practices to run, or our requisite minutes on the ellipitcal to squeeze in so we can still squeeze into our jeans.

Having tempted the reader with the image of this lucky man or woman, whose unfettered access to reading time we can all envy, Calvino wisely reminds us that in addition to being unrealistic, such an approach to the reading life is ultimately not even preferable:

“The latest news may well be banal or mortifying, but it nonetheless remains a point at which to stand and look both backward and forward.  To be able to read the classics, you have to know from where you are reading them; otherwise both book and reader will be lost in a timeless cloud.  This, then, is the reason why the greatest ‘yield’ from reading the classics will be obtained by someone who knows how to alternate them with the proper dose of current affairs.  And this does not necessarily imply a state of imperturbable calm.  It can also be the fruit of nervous impatience, of a huffing-and-puffing discontent of mind.”

What Calvino doesn’t say (in fact, he concludes the opposite point, that reading great books should not be done “out of duty or respect, only out of love”) is that just as “a proper dose of current affairs” helps us to get more out of reading the classics, so too reading great works of literature can nourish our minds and souls for the daily grind.

Happy reading,

Tim

Socrates Where Are You Now?

In explaining why our democracy and our institutions of learning need Socrates’ commitment to self-examination in order “to fulfill the promise of democratic citizenship,” University of Chicago professor Martha Nussbaum notes that “Our democracy, like ancient Athens, is prone to hasty and sloppy reasoning, and to the substitution of invective for real deliberation” (Cultivating Humanity, page 10).

Pulitzer-Prize winner Leonard Pitts, Jr., offers an especially clear example of this substitution in his op-ed piece, “Blame those dogged liberals,” a look at how conservatives have re-branded the word “liberal” as a bad word.  Key quote: “It’s telling that even liberals don’t use the word liberal anymore.”

I share this piece less as a liberal salvo than as a think piece for all of us on a troubling aspect of our civic discourse.  Lest this blog lean too far left, I’d be most pleased to have someone post a comment offering evidence of mindless, manipulative invective from the other side.

Have a great weekend,

Tim

Cultivating Humanity: Educating World Citizens

On this election day, a day in which citizens of my town are burdened with the task of going to the polls to approve another school levy just to keep up with the rising cost of doing business, a reflection on the important role education plays in our democracy:

In the introduction to her learned and thought-provoking treatise, Cultivating Humanity:  A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, law and philosophy professor Martha Nussbaum delineates “three capacities” which are “essential to the cultivation of humanity” and therefore essential to good citizenship in our increasingly interdependent global village.  Professor Nussbaum notes that citizens require:

1.  “the capacity for critical examination of oneself and one’s traditions.”

2.  “an ability to see themselves not simply as citizens of some local region or group but also, and above all, as human beings bound to all other human beings by ties of recognition and concern.”

3.  “the ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of another person different from oneself, to be an intelligent reader of that person’s story.” This last capacity, which Professor Nussbaum also calls “narrative imagination” and which might also fairly be called “empathy,” is not something we necessarily think about as something to be leaned in school, but Nussbaum wisely points out that one of the most significant results of meaningful engagement with the arts, and especially with literature, is the development of this very capacity.

Public schools aren’t the only places where these capacities can be learned.  And I don’t like seeing my taxes go up any more than anyone else does, but with all that’s at stake for our community, our nation and our world, I don’t see how we can afford not to put our schools in the best position possible to offer our youngest citizens the best education possible.

I’d love to chat more, but democracy calls.  I’ve got to go vote to do my part for our schools . . .