"The Classics are Problematic!"

 

It seems that over the past year, I’ve seen more commentary about the Classics in literature being “problematic.” Some individuals and/or groups have even gone so far as to “cancel” works of literature that have been revered for decades, if not hundreds of years. 

This greatly irritates me - of course some of the content in Homer’s The Odyssey or The Iliad would not be considered acceptable according today’s standards. The Odyssey was written in the 8th century BC and wasn’t published in English for the first time until 1488! The Ancient Greeks lived and operated under a very different social world than us, with different belief systems. How can we can take our 21st century mindsets and project them on an ancient civilization and “cancel” them for not living up to our standards? That is not to say that looking at how they lived and generating thoughtful, critical analysis is not helpful; it is and I think it should be encouraged. What can we learn from them? Is there anything we like, dislike, and why? Why would we or why wouldn’t we do certain things today? 

We are all fallible and no matter how much we strive in our current culture to “get it right” - news flash: we won’t get it all right! I guarantee you that another generation will look back on us and say, “What. Were. They. Thinking!?” Should we be “canceled” because we were doing the best we could with what we had? I also guarantee you that there are things we are doing right now, that in our ownlifetime, we will look back and think, “Yea, that didn’t age well.” Isn’t the point of studying past time periods to learn from them? As the cliche goes: Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it. 

I was a history major and studied some of the most gruesome periods in human history, from the ancient Greeks to genocides in the 20th century. There were some topics discussed in my classes that were extremely uncomfortable. It’s impossible to study the American Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement without seeing, and reading content that is indicative of those times periods. If one wants a thorough understanding of something, you’ve got to get down and dirty with it and leave no stone unturned. 

So, how does this relate to classic fiction? Historians will actually use fictional narratives from a time period to help piece together the social, cultural, religious, and political climate of that time. It doesn’t matter how “problematic” their beliefs  were, these things still happened. Are we no longer going to let our youth read To Kill a Mockingbird because it uses racial slurs? Are we going to stop the publication of certain books written in the 1850s or the 1920s because there are derogatory depictions of [insert the people group here]? Limiting access to content isn’t necessarily the answer -  for me, I think it’s more beneficial to look at a text, in it’s proper context and study it, debate it and generate good discussions on where we were and how far we’ve come. 

Now, if you’re reading a book and it really doesn’t sit well with you, then you can choose not to read it. However, that shouldn’t necessarily prevent others from having access to a text. Also, it is a privilege to have easy, unrestricted access to books. There are people across the world who would do anything to have access to books and read what they want to read, when they want to read it, without being penalized for it. We get so comfortable in our own lives, that we forget there are still people who are prohibited from learning how to read! Yes, we may have things we are greatly concerned about in our own countries, but sometimes we need a little bit of perspective. 

With all that said, I’ll leave you with two quotes from fictional works that talk about what happens to a society when content is censored and books banned. 

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been re-written, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except and endless present in which the Party is always right.” - 1984, George Orwell (1949)

“Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthful recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. … Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often.” - Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (1951). 

Like my bookish content? Follow me on Instagram for more!