This is the essay that I wrote for my last test in the American Lit. II course that I took during Fall of 2010.
Knowing truth--discovering truth--is a much more complicated
concept/process than it appears to be at first glance. Different authors
have different views on exactly how one should go about "knowing
truth." These views influence what the authors write and publish, and
from their works we can discern their individual views on the discovery
and comprehension of truth.
Realism: Henry James
Henry James is widely considered to be a Realist writer. This
designation stems from the objective view of truth that he exhibits in
his writing. Towards the end of his work "The Beast in the Jungle,"
James writes:
"The escape would have been to love her; then, then he would have lived. She had
lived--who could say now with what passion?--since she had loved him
for himself; whereas he had never thought of her (ah, how hugely it
glared at him!) but in the chill of his egotism and the light of her
use."
Throughout the entire story, James' protagonist, John Marcher, is living
his life with an overwhelming feeling of destiny: that something
significant is to happen in his life. Only after his female confidant
and close friend had died did he realize that his destiny had been "to
love her. Marcher had not perceived that romance could be the true
culmination of his sense of destiny, but in spite of his misguided
perceptions James leads us to believe that she truly
was his destiny. It was an objective truth, even though he did not know what the truth was.
Modernism: T.S. Eliot
While James thought truth was absolutely objective, T.S. Eliot took an
entirely different spin on the topic. From Eliot's modernist
perspective, reality can be derived from works of art. At the conclusion
of "The Wasteland" after he had been referencing numerous works of art,
Eliot penned: "These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Why then
Ile fit you." The fragments to which Eliot refers are the works of art
he had been referencing. In this line of poetry he is essentially saying
that he is pulling all of the shards of art together against his
foundation in order to fortify himself--in order to know or discover
truth. Essentially, though, Eliot is not discovering truth, but rather
using imagination to create it. Think about it for a minute: most of the
works of art he is "shoring against [his] ruins" were created out of
someone's imagination. They are fictional. In addition to the fictional
nature of these works, Eliot is also individually selecting which works
to use as supports, thereby creating a second layer of creative
imagination.
Post-Modernism: Thomas Pynchon
Hot on the heels of Modernism came the Postmodernist movement.
Postmodernist writers generally emphasize the subjectivity of
experiences, and the concept that individuals create their own truth or
reality. From his writing we can see that Thomas Pynchon subscribed to
that school of thought. Throughout his story "Entropy," Pynchon presents
the perspectives of two different groups of people: the man and the
woman in the upstairs apartment and the party in the lower apartment. I
suggest that Pynchon is showing us two different "realities." In the
upper apartment the man and the woman are living in the reality of
entropy. They think about the laws of thermodynamics, they observe a
constant temperature outside their apartment for several days in a row,
and then the woman ultimately ends their lives in their truth of entropy
by smashing the window. In contrast, the people at the party below are
living the truth of jazz, booze, and relationships. They know nothing of
the truth of entropy in the apartment above, so it is not "true" for
them. Pynchon is telling us that truth is totally subjective and based
solely on individual perceptions.
Comparison
As we can see from the differences illustrated above, many people and
authors hold to differing views of how truth is known or discovered.
James and the Realists claim that truth is objective and does not
change, even if we do not know what the truth actually is. Eliot and the
Modernists say that are and imagination create truth. Finally, the
Postmodernists claim that truth is entirely subjective and inherently
dependent on each individual's perceptions.
So who is right? Each group presents mutually exclusive claims, so they
can't all be right. Since truth cannot be both objective and subjective,
Postmodernism's view cannot stand since they claim that the Realist's
perspective of objectivity is also valid, which invalidates their view.
Modernism boils down to essentially a Postmodernism based on art and
imagination, so out of these three perspectives, Realism is the most
probable. In the end, it seems like all of this "progression" in
literary theory amounts to little more than mind benders and good
stories to read, and not any real advancement in the understanding of
how we know truth.
Or does it?
Works Cited
+ The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James.
+
The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot.
+
"Entropy" by Thomas Pynchon.
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