Some Thoughts on Literature

Throughout my life, I have struggled to reconcile the joys of gorgeous literature with a self-inflicted aspiration for asceticism. Somehow, I’ve allowed myself to believe that truths are absolute – conclusive and whole within themselves and absent from anything remotely immoral. But this thinking condemns me and others who entertain it twofold:
1) None of us, even the good and innocent, are entirely unstained. Thinking that truths cannot be found in imperfection is thinking that truth cannot come to or through man.
2) In abstaining from “immor(t)al” literature, we miss opportunites to glean – to learn how to recognize goodness and truth – and then to harvest – to turn that recognition of goodness into knowledge of goodness: to increase our known truths.
This is my first year at university, and it’s given me many front-row tickets to the moral wrestling ring. The most frequent matching of opponents (apart from Honor Code vs. Desire For Beard) is Literature vs. Supposed Spirituality. Dr. Sowell brought these battered boxers to a head once again in a lecture on Thursday (Jan. 10), and Literature won out. We learn invaluable moral lessons from classic works – those works of literature classified under Dr. Sowell’s apt appellation “immor(t)al tales.” However, license to read about immorality is not license to practice it. For example, in Dante’s Inferno, reading about the romance of Lancelot and Guinevere did not rid Paolo and Francesca of culpability in practicing adultery. When reading “immor(t)al tales,” it is our foremost responsibility to be responsible. We must ask ourselves what moral messages lie behind stories. We cannot view the isolated depraved events in literature as justification for immorality, but rather must survey the entire literary landscape – the “big picture” – as we seek to find truths in literature and in ourselves.