Christian Notes on Classic Literature

TWILIGHT FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM

The Great Depression had a stranglehold on the American people in the early 1930s, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, a member of the so-called Lost Generation and chronicler of the Jazz Age, was struggling to make ends meet and to keep his marriage to his increasingly troubled wife intact by writing mediocre short stories to keep the money flowing. In 1934, he published his last completed novel, Tender is the Night, dealing with a brilliant psychiatrist who struggles with an increasingly meaningless career and an emotionally troubled wife and finally declines into drunkenness and dissipation. The goals the protagonist established for himself - fame, money, a beautiful wife, and social influence - were at the heart of his understanding of the American Dream. Fitzgerald had discovered, however, that such achievements are both empty and transitory at best, as anyone who knows the Scriptures can readily attest. The novel is a classic illustration of Jesus' question to His disciples, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" This is a question that we must always keep before us in this materialistic age.

The latest addition to my Christian Notes on Classic Literature page.

FEMINISM OR HUMANISM?

In the 140 years since its initial performance, Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, the latest addition to my literature website, has been viewed as a proto-feminist document by advocates and critics alike. Ibsen, however, denied that he was a feminist and insisted that he wrote instead of all humanity, portraying the forces in society that kept people from becoming the free individuals they ought to be. The play pictures a late nineteenth-century middle-class household that is completely dominated by the husband, who treats his wife like a child. She is pampered and spoiled and has no idea that life can be lived in any other way. By the end of the play, she insists that she must leave her husband and children in order to achieve self-realization. which Ibsen believed was essential for all people. From a Christian pespective, however, Ibsen's approach to men and women, marriage, and society is deeply flawed. The relationship between Torvald and Nora Helmer at both the beginning and the end of the story is far from the biblical ideal and demonstrates innate selfishness, even when they try to give of themselves for the benefit of the other. The play is worth reading, both as a way of understanding some of the roots of modern humanism and feminism and as a basis for discussing how both fall far short of what God wants people to be, both in their individual lives and in their relationship to one another.

Charles Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit, the latest addition to the literature page, is a long, rambling novel that, unlike most of the author's works, was written with a clearly stated goal in mind. Dickens wrote that he intended the novel "to exhibit in a variety of aspects, the commonest of all the vices; to show how Selfishness propagates itself; and to what a grim giant it may grow." Near the end of the novel, the title character mourns that his own selfish behavior had ruined everyone and everything he had touched, wrecking his family in the process. Such a description may lead to the conclusion that the novel is essentially bleak, but Dickens also includes admirable characters whose selflessness contrasts with the prevailing attitudes and behavior of those around them, and some of the selfish characters repent and experience a form of redemption, though with Dickens such redemption is always on the human level rather than eternal in nature. Also worth noting is the fact that the author took a short break in the process of writing the book to pen a novelette called A Christmas Carol, which, like the longer book, deals with a selfish man who finds redemption at the end of the story.

WE OUGHT TO OBEY GOD RATHER THAN MEN

Some of the most difficult ethical dilemmas occur when people are forced to decide between the demands of competing authorities. What happens when the state demands one thing and Scripture requires the opposite? Peter and John had no trouble making such a decision when the Sanhedrin told them to stop preaching in the name of Jesus; they boldly proclaimed, "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). When any human authority requires the Christian to sin against God, this must be his answer. But what of those who are not Christians? How do they resolve such a dilemma? One of the classic treatments of this subject is Sophocles' tragedy Antigone, the latest addition to the literature website. The play asks the reader to choose which is more important, loyalty to the government or loyalty to the gods, and the decision is complicated by the fact that both sides of the question involve responsibility to the family. The central characters in the play both stake out extreme positions - Creon, the king, insists that the good of the state must take priority, even if this necessitates violating the decrees of the gods, while Antigone maintains that any human demand must take a back seat to divine standards. The playwright provides an ambiguous ending - both extremists suffer for their choices, leaving the audience to decide what path is the right one. Unlike the situation in today's society, where many are very willing to reject both the authority of God and that of the state, Sophocles assumes that both forms of authority are valid. An increasing number of people today are left with no real authority beyond their own feelings or popular opinion, but for the Christian, the authority must always be the Word of God, which does not change with the shifting winds of human thought and feeling.