Literature has the power to shape character and steer paths long after the last page is turned.
By Dr. Susan M. Fisher, Classical Lit. Guru at The Lukeion Project
Call me Ishmael. Rather, call me Ahab, because that’s who I am in this particular tale. The setting: my vegetable garden. The “white whale”: an unseen deer that keeps getting into my beds and topping my plants.
This analogy came to me the other morning when I was yet again shoring up the defenses of my netted gardens against what has been an unprecedented onslaught of deer damage this summer.
This story, however, is more about the fact that I compared my struggle to that of Captain Ahab against the relentless Moby Dick than it is about the struggle itself, especially since Moby Dick stands out as the one book I really and truly loathed from my high school literature classes.
What struck me as funny is the fact that despite my feelings about this book, it was informing my life, as good literature does. Was I becoming obsessed by the deer as Ahab was with the whale? Was I ignoring other important aspects of life and work in my pursuit of victory? Would Ahab’s mostly pyrrhic victory be my fate as well? I pondered these thoughts and more while I staked and netted, pulled weeds and picked beans.
The importance of literature has taken many blows in the last decade or more as colleges have gotten more expensive and students now compete for jobs in a global arena. As humanities departments have shrunk, the value of literature has been obscured in the myth that it does not have direct relevance to the post-academic world. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Certainly not everyone will become an English teacher, but that is not the point. Nor is literature just a fun past-time, although it is that as well.
Beyond being a good read, high-quality literature informs life. It has the power to shape character and steer paths long after the last page is turned.
Jobs come and go. In fact, according to the 2019 Bureau of Labor Statistics people change jobs, on average, twelve times in their lives. But people live with themselves their entire lives. The lessons of literature read will be there to inform, challenge, condone, console, and influence them the whole time.
As I continued to work in the garden my thoughts moved from the censure of the Ahab revelation to thoughts of permanence. The impending shift to the fall garden had me thinking that, unlike the Latin poet Horace, I was not “building a monument more lasting than bronze” nor would my vegetables nor I escape Libitina. This might have made me sad if I had not remembered the words of Japanese author Motoori Norinaga that “To know the beauty of the passing of things is to discern the power and essence, not just of the moon and the cherry blossoms, but of every single thing existing in this world…”
While I worked, I was Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden, wondering awestruck at some small seedlings unfurling. I was Laura Ingalls Wilder preparing for the impending Dakota winter. I was my grandmother and hers before her and generations yet to come. I was continuing Wendell Berry’s legacy of place and community and innovating like William Kamkwamba who harnessed the wind. I was all of these and more.
Humans are natural storytellers and good literature cultivates this predilection. In fact, so powerful is the force of a well-written story that not only can it resonate with us whether we liked it or not, but it will continue to steer and shape us long after we put it down. This is quite an investment.
