Don't Learn Literature from Memes

Today’s post will be a bit shorter and perhaps more of a rant than usual. Still, our topic does seem to be a common problem and it’s one that is, I think, worth being aware of: Don’t learn literature through memes.

A few examples I’ve come across just recently should be enough to get the point across. For instance, was J. R. R. Tolkien particularly florid in his descriptions of the natural world? The meme is “yes,” but in his actual books, no, not extraordinarily so.

How does Dante portray himself in The Divine Comedy? A common meme portrays him as smug and putting people he doesn’t like in hell. In the book, though, the entire point of his journey is that he’s lost his way, and in fact is distressed to meet even people he likes in the Inferno.

We can easily expand “literature” to its broadest definition for a couple more examples. What are “Biblically accurate angels?” Presumably, the strange and frightening forms in some of the apocalyptic books. Those do exist, yes, but setting aside that angels, as spiritual beings, do not have a definite physical form at all, when they do appear in Scripture they most often appear as men.

In Plato’s dialogues, is Socrates a pest who always asks questions but never takes a stand on his own opinions? A common answer is yes, but when reading through the dialogues I noticed him making positive arguments for his own positions in Meno, Crito, Gorgias, and Phaedrus, among several others. Interestingly, there’s also an inverse form of this meme, where his dialogues are just lectures in disguise. Quas Lacrimas addressed this on twitter just recently, but in short, no. Even Socrates’ discussions with friends aren’t reducible to lectures, and the dialogues with the Sophists are even hostile.

Now, these are all easy enough to prove false, but they illustrate a point I’d like to make: Take second-hand opinions with a grain of salt. The only way to really know a book is to look at the book, i.e., read it for yourself. Obviously, this does not mean that you should never accept or listen to others’ opinions, but be careful who you listen to. This will be a major point, really the major point, in the next book I review.