Political Messages in Literature

So... What do you believe in?

That seems to be one of the issues that everyone deals with when they read. Their beliefs color what they read and how they perceive what is happening within a story. This doesn't include non-fiction that is overtly political or persuasive in nature, but primarily fiction.

One of the primary ones I want to mention is the Dr. Seuss story, Yertle the Turtle. The story was written in the middle of World War II and, he said, represented Hitler's despotic rise to power over all of Europe. It's easy to see. However, since he also said "kids can see a moral coming a mile off," and "there's an inherent moral in any story," it suggests to me that these morals can change with the times. Here are the last lines in Yertle:

And today the great Yertle, that Marvelous he, / Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see. / And the turtles, of course ... all the turtles are free / As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.

From my perspective, that could represent any dictatorial regime, from (America's view of) the USSR during the Cold War to modern-day North Korea. I'm sure people outside the United States view us as a dictatorship and could apply this to our own political structure. Hell, some Americans view the country that way...

Now, I also want to suggest that an audience can read a moral into a story that was never intended. I have a story about that.

My wife's cousin went to an art-focused university, where he studied the visual arts. Late one night, he realized that he had a project due early the next morning. So what did he do? The most natural thing he could, of course. He pulled a hunk of meat out of the freezer, drilled a few screws into it and took it to his class. When asked what it represented, he had to think quick. "It's uh... a statement of... uh... the industrialization of the meat industry..." The teacher, of course said the most natural thing a teacher would say in this situation: "Dude, I totally get it!" The meaning was never intended. It was something—some art that he did without thinking about any message and when confronted, he made something up, and people swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.

Now, let's bring it around to ourselves. Are we writing with an overt (or not so overt) purpose in mind? In my current work in progress, there can be a message. I'm not particularly married to the moral, but if someone wants to read a special meaning into it, they might not be wrong.

In all, I think this goes back to our discussion in one of my previous posts: you can't choose your audience. And in this case, you can't necessarily choose how your audience perceives your work, either. People always understand stories the way they want to, and that'll always be the case, no matter how hard you try to change it.

Just for kicks...

Ha, ha...

Thanks for wreading!

Jeff

And it's my birthday! Woo-hoo!