Chris reports:
[Ayn Rand presents the Novel as "the" major literary form, and tells us
that its four attributes, in order of importance, are "Theme, Plot,
Characterization, and Style". Rand has found something called 'theme'("the
summation of
a novel's abstract meaning") and shoved it in at the very top.]
I take Rand's judgment on this issue to be so wrong-headed as to make me
wary/suspicious of any comparable judgment about "art" she might ever
pronounce. When I was in school, I disagreed with how they taught
"understanding
literature" in school. "Read for the theme, kids -- what the story means!" But
a theme is never what makes a story great. 'War is hell, jealousy is bad,
man needs his illusions, you can't recover the past.' A million awful stories
have exactly those august, commonplace themes.
Moreover, the search for a story's alleged theme literally leads students
away from where the cherishable rewards are.
There are more good "themes" in ten pages of David Hume's A TREATISE OF
HUMAN NATURE than in half a thousand novels -- and they are all far more
cogently articulated and argued in Hume.
Besides, stories don't have a "the meaning of".
Rand's position moves Chris to recall his youth:
[Which isn't all that unusual, is it? Didn't your high school literature
teacher always want to talk about the 'theme' of "David Copperfield" or
"Silas Marner"? That annoyed me than and it annoys me now.]
I share Chris's pain. To compound the joy-killing effect of focusing on
"theme", the teachers chose books like SILAS MARNER to instill a love and
"understanding" of literature in their students. Awful.
