Everyday Canvas

Violence in Novels

With the twentieth century literature, probably due to two World Wars, came the prevalent mention of violence in novels. This is not to say that there weren’t a good number of violence in the literary arts earlier. Just not to this extent, I think.

With time, the handling of violence in literature emerges in patterns of changing purpose. In Old English literature, violence told a story; in Middle English literature, it was used to incite religious sentiments. During the Middle Ages, people just wanted to survive without starting a religious strife. Religion caused much of the violence in the Middle Ages. Not that this is dormant in our day, either.

In our day, with the worldwide violence continuing against communities, women, children, writers, journalists, and people of different faiths and beliefs, even character-on-character violence has found new vistas, especially through the horror and crime stories.

In what ways do authors dispose of their characters with or without a reason? I can put these in two groups:

1. Accidents, illnesses, plagues: When these hit the plots, they may not be real accidents, mostly. They happen inside the novel mostly planned, plotted, and put in place with malice by someone or other. This someone can even be from a non-human species.
2. Wars, mass murders, kidnappings, and attacks by animals or otherworldy creatures.

One book that was made into a movie, which I can recall, is The Third Man by the noted author Graham Greene, whose other books also dealt with character on character violence. Other writers I can think of are J. G. Ballard, Iain Banks, Paul Auster, Margaret Atwood, Franz Kafka, Anthony Burgess, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc. Then, who can forget Stephen King, Dean Koontz and the likes?

The question that comes to me is, “Why? Why the violence?” I think it has to do with presenting the human nature as it is, and human nature, when it is darkest, is the basest. It must be for that elementary reason which made the old greats like Aristotle and Plato offer their ideas on the subject.

Plato thought giving voice to dangerous probing of negative emotions through poetry was a distraction from higher thinking, as he thought showing violence in any public media could create a violent culture.

Aristotle, on the other hand, believed that poetry and tragedy was a welcome vehicle for expressing strong and violent emotions, and showing blood and violence on stage was a necessary catharsis.

Some time ago, when Joyce Carol Oates was asked why her writing was violent? She answered: “The serious writer, after all, bears witness. The serious writer restructures ''reality'' in the service of his or her art, and surely hopes for a unique esthetic vision and some felicity of language; but reality is always the foundation… in fact, my writing isn't usually explicitly violent, but deals, most of the time, with the phenomenon of violence and its aftermath, in ways not unlike those of the Greek dramatists; when I point out that, in any case, writing is language and, in a very important sense, is more ''about'' language than ''about'' a subject-“
Joyce-Carol-Oates-article  

I think it is impossible to generalize the meaning or use and disuse of violence as its possibilities show a far range than I can imagine. A good writer rarely introduces violence point blank. He or she rather shows it as misfortune within a theme, usually having to do with psychological jams, and spiritual, historical, political and social crises.

Thus, in essence, my belief is, violence is better shown to portray a concept, an idea, or a good reason, as it is implanted in all of us and in our societies.

---By the way, I started writing this just to ruminate on the subject, but it got the better of me and became a bit long for a blog entry. I could probably write more, but I realized I was getting out of hand.