George Orwell, who write 1984 and Animal Farm, among others, once said:
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon… And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.”
Therefore, the question was asked, are all good stories inherently political? I don’t think that’s remotely true.
Of course, “good” is an inherently subjective evaluation and therefore, pointless in any rational discussion, but since when has that stopped anyone from declaring that there must be some inherent political motivation for writing anything at all.
This came up, once again, on a forum, where you had people who argued that there are only two reasons that you write anything in fiction. Either you are trying to describe the world the way that you want it to be (political) or you are trying to work through the beauty of the prose (aesthetics). There are no other options. I wholeheartedly disagree with this assertion.
I used my own writing as an example but I could have used the overwhelming majority of fiction in its place. I write to entertain. I want my readers to go on a journey with my characters, such that they come to a satisfactory conclusion in the end and enjoyed themselves along the way. There is no bigger message other than “have fun”. People seem to like that, which is why books like that tend to sell well.
Of course, the people who don’t want to believe that, they simply reject it out of hand. “All books have some kind of political message in them!” Except the overwhelming majority that don’t, of course. This is where things started to get heated because they were desperate to prove their point. I made the argument that, if I have a character pick up a piece of trash and throw it into the trash can, that is not an inherent political message to save the environment. It’s a character acting as a character acts, nothing more. You might interpret it that way, but your interpretation has nothing at all to do with the intention of the author and these people are really looking to assign intent to authors who have not intended these conclusions.
Unfortunately, these people argue with that. How can we know what the author intends? Well, funny you mention that, because this discussion is taking place on a forum for, you guessed it! Authors! Most authors came out and said that no, they have no intentional political messages in anything that they write. A few did, a few did agree that they had a message they wanted to pass on, but they were in the vast minority.
So they changed tactics because, unfortunately, these people don’t understand how to admit they’re wrong. It might be unintentional, but your subconscious mind is still putting those messages in there, even if you’re not aware of it! Your books are still a description of what you want the world to be and what lessons you want humanity to learn!
Except that’s easy to disprove too. Cosmic horror is a thing. I don’t think you’re going to find anyone in their right mind who thinks that Cthulhu rising and destroying the world is their idealized version of reality. Post-apocalyptic fiction exists too. Are we supposed to believe that they want the world to come to a flaming end in nuclear fire? Worse, there are plenty of books where the bad guys win in the end, or that everyone loses. What’s that supposed to tell us? I can even point to books like Prison Ship by Martin Caidin, where the entire book is filled with graphic alien rape sequences and torture porn. It was so graphic that the publishers felt it necessary to mark the worst parts so that readers with weak constitutions could skip over it if they wished. Are we supposed to think that Martin Caidin wanted humanity to fall to a horde of sex-crazy, violent extraterrestrials? Are you seriously listening to yourself?
That’s really the problem because I don’t think that these people are. They’ve been influenced by pseudo-intellectuals who spend all of their time noodling their navels and no time at all living in actual reality. As I had to say several times during the discussion, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Just because you can attach an idea to which you are attached to the narrative, that doesn’t mean it’s actually there.
These people didn’t get it. In fact, after receiving all of the criticism that they did, they pulled the oldest trick in the book. They started to whine “you just don’t understand!” “That’s not what we’re talking about!” Well sure it is. I can go back and I can quote where this whole thing started. In fact, the original poster asked a couple of very direct questions which framed the discussion. I’d be happy to answer those right here.
When you write, do you strive to be political?
Not remotely. Not ever. Now that’s not to say that, within the context of the book itself, I might not include political themes that might tie the world together. That’s not our world though, that’s theirs. There is a difference. I can’t remember a single time in the dozens and dozens of books that I’ve written that I ever wrote anything that I intended to tie back to the real world. Not once. Not ever. Science fiction, which is what I write, is escapist by its very nature. I’m not trying to make people think about reality. I’m helping them to get away and enjoy their time on their own.
Do you see the political developing itself as you write?
Never once, except for the aforementioned politics that may happen within the story world. What I write is what I intend to write. I don’t get to the end and wonder how in the world I got there. I go where I plan to go and that is never into real world political commentary. I’m just not interested and, to be honest, if I’m reading someone else’s book and I see that they’re pushing a political agenda, more often than not, I’ll just put that book down and not read further.
Do you ever see an unintended political purpose in your writing?
Never. Again, nothing unintended ever happens. If you can read something into one of my books, that’s on you, not me. Just because you see animals in the clouds, that doesn’t mean they’re actually there. This isn’t about coming to an emotionally comforting conclusion based on what you read, it’s about dealing with what’s actually there and, sadly, a lot of people are incapable of doing that. It’s fine to lose yourself between the pages of a good book, but once you put the book down, you have to return to Earth.
Do you enjoy stories with overt political messages, subtle political messages, or absolutely no political messages (which Orwell would say is not possible)?
Absolutely not and Orwell was wrong, as I already pointed out. This is a lot of confirmation bias, seeing what you want to see whether it’s there or not. This is where I think a lot of people go so horribly wrong. They’re looking for things that aren’t there but that doesn’t mean they won’t find them there regardless. This is because far too many people insist on living in their own heads and not in the real world. They start off with a comforting idea of what reality ought to be like and when it turns out not to be accurate, they simply clench their eyes closed and refuse to accept the real world. The people who believe Orwell are the people who see what Orwell says is there, not what’s actually there.
That’s kind of a problem. It’s a failure in the human mind. Just because you want it to be there, that doesn’t mean that it is. Yet they can’t just accept the evidence that they’re wrong because they desperately want to be right. It’s why so many of these discussions wind up nowhere. The second that they changed their minds and went to hide away in their safe spaces, the entire thread fell apart because they were incapable of honestly engaging. No conclusions were reached because no conclusions were wanted. They just expected everyone to agree with them. When we didn’t, in fact, when we pointed out how wrong they were, they ran off to pout.
How sad is that?
