Wandering through Fantasy Worlds with Kvothe and Harry Potter (Part I)

If I were to describe Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles series in one sentence it would be that it is Harry Potter's more mature and sophisticated sibling, who, instead of going to grade school to study magic, went to college. In a similar vein, my reaction to watching the first season of Heroes (the only one worth watching) was that it was the younger smarter sibling of the X-Men, who went of to university and got into heroin. (In the case of Heroes there actually is a character whose superpower is to be able to see and paint the future while high.) As with Harry Potter, Kingkiller is about a teenage orphan, Kvothe, whose parents were murdered off by dark powers, studying magic. As with J. K. Rowling, Rothfuss' chief strengths as a writer are his ability to create interesting characters, backed by witty dialogue and a world for us to explore through the eyes of these characters.

What Rothfuss has over Rowling is that, like Tolkien, he offers the impression of depth to his world; that it is not just a prop that will collapse if touched. Rowling's wizarding world, in contrast, while utterly fascinating as a concept striking deep into the collective subconsciousness of readers (I cannot think of another fantasy world that I so desperately wanted to be real), remains an immensely clever joke. Even by the end of the series one does not get the sense that Rowling ever bothered to work out the mechanics and limitations of her magical system and the inner workings of her wizarding society. Particularly the question of why wizards, even muggle-loving ones like Arthur Weasley, live in secret outside of general society and in ignorance of it. (See "Yeshiva Hogwarts.") One suspects that this is the reason why Rowling kept her story so narrowly focused on Harry, only allowing us to experience the wizarding world from Harry's limited perspective and kept Harry's own experience of the wizarding world to specific set pieces, like the Weasley home, Diagon Alley, and Hogwarts. Allowing Harry broader range would have forced her to take her own wizarding world seriously and not just as a prop.  Rothfuss, in contrast, treats his magic with a level of sophistication surpassing the "science" of most science fiction. As Tolkien managed to invent several fully functional languages for Lord of the Rings that people can study today, one suspects that Rothfuss would, if pressed, be able to present a plausibly sounding "scientific" lecture on his magic. The same goes for his world's various races, religions, countries, and politics.

Rothfuss' other major advantage over Rowling is in creating, in Kvothe, a fully flesh and blood lead character the likes of which exist in few other works of fantasy. With Harry Potter, the interest is always the world and characters around him. Harry serves as a means to explore Hogwarts and characters like Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, Dumbledore, Sirius, and Lupin, all of whom are far more interesting than Harry in of himself. Harry starts off the series as a star-struck modern-day version of T. H. White's young King Arthur, Wart, before evolving into a moody teenager. It is only in Deathly Hallows, as Harry contemplates the necessity of his death to defeat Voldemort, that Harry steps in as a worthy protagonist in his own right. (It is for this reason that, whether or not Deathly Hallows is the best book in the series, it is certainly the best written of the series and the one in which Rowling stepped into her own as a mature writer.) One suspects that this is why Rowling never allowed Harry to exist on his own but always has him interacting with other characters, even going so far as to make Harry's chief strength his connection to his friends as opposed to Voldemort who is completely self-contained. (See "Adolescent Military Genius.") Kvothe, in contrast, is the star attraction, not just a cipher through which to tell a story. Rothfuss does not just focus his narrative on Kvothe, he tells almost his entire story from inside Kvothe's head. One almost gets the sense that Rothfuss could have eliminated his entire world, leaving Kvothe floating in ether, and still hold on to the reader's attention.

This places Kingkiller as one of those rare fantasy series that is only incidentally about fantasy. In much the same way that Orson Scott Card novels are about characters and relationships and only incidentally take place in a science-fiction universe, Rothfuss has one utterly compelling character, Kvothe, and a world for Kvothe to operate in. The fact that this world is a beautifully rendered fantasy world only serves to establish Rothfuss as one of the greatest writers of this generation of any genre. 

(To be continued ...)                

The King’s Speech and I

This past Shabbat the rabbi at my synagogue talked about the movie The King's Speech as part of his sermon. He used the movie as a way of relating to Moses' speech impediment. The King's Speech chronicles the struggles of King George VI with his stammer. As the younger son, it might not have been of critical importance, but then his older brother Edward VIII had his "women problem" (funny how the rabbi had to talk around the fact that Edward VIII was forced to abdicate his thrown after less than a year due to his marriage to his mistress, a twice divorced American divorcee). George VI eventually sought the help of a radically eccentric speech therapist and went on to deliver some of the most inspiring speeches of the Second World War. Soon afterwards I saw that Orson Scott Card also had given the movie high marks. With endorsements like these I figured I had to go see it.

This was hardly an exciting movie and at two hours does drag a bit. The film covers an interesting political story, with sex and romance, but it is not a political or a romantic film. The movie deals with World War II, but it is not a World War II movie. The movie could have been a comedy, but it has way too much respect for its lead character to make this a comedy. What you do have is a very human story with Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush giving some of the best back and forth acting I have seen in a long time. Rush certainly steals the movie as its sole source of comedy, but Colin Firth gives the best portrayal I have ever seen of living with stammering. That probably owes something to the fact that I cannot think of any other serious film explorations of the topic. I say this as someone who struggles with a stammer. What particularly struck me is that the stammer is one that is similar to mine. Like George VI, the real problem for me is less repeating syllables even if that sometimes is the result, but in finding one's voice getting caught and being unable to get out the words that are in one's head.

In the movie George VI is able to overcome his stammer by a combination of singing and letting out strings of curse words. These are both useful in that they allow a person to get around inhibitions, which is usually the true cause of any stammer. For George VI these inhibitions were growing up as the younger prince, in the shadow of a far more glamorous older brother and an often abusive father. I am not much into swearing, even if I take a certain pleasure in spouting out things that other people find bizarre and even offensive. This has the benefit of allowing me to take control of a situation and make it my own instead of having to constantly fashion myself to suit others. What has really worked for me is singing. I have a good head for lyrics, even if I cannot actually sing on key. Knowing that my singing is something that only I will ever enjoy and that it is something just for me, operating on my terms, in a way, makes it all the more helpful. Obviously I cannot sing every time I talk, but I can usually maintain some sort of rhythm. As long as I have that rhythm I can avoid the worst of my stammering.

I doubt that I will ever be able to truly overcome my stammer and I liked the fact that the movie did not have George VI overcome his either. But I do believe I have managed to become a relatively decent public speaker, though certainly one with an odd sounding voice. A side effect of my rhythm speaking is that I go up at the end of syllables. Hopefully I will never have to lead a nation though a world war; being able to stand in front of a classroom full of students will suit me just fine.

Slouching Toward Bosnia

In many respects this sort of tit for tat conflict, I described earlier, where each side is going to push the boundaries as to what is acceptable and justify it as simply doing to the other what is already being done to them is behind the deepening divisions in this country. Republicans maligned President Clinton, Democrats maligned George W. Bush in revenge and now Republicans seek to do the same to Obama. Democrats filibustered judicial nominations and now the Republicans are doing the same. Conservatives decided that the mainstream was not playing fair with the news so they created Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Liberals responded in kind by creating Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann. We are not shooting at each other yet. But we could all too easily, I fear, go from only accepting the media of our side as legitimate to following Michael Makovi and saying that we will only accept the legal authority of the people we support. This would mean that there would be Republican and Democrat police officers, judges and each side could have its own congress and president. At this point the best possible scenario would be secession as the country officially is broken up to accommodate all parties. If, as is likely the case, this is not practical in terms of territory and allotment of natural resources, we are left with war as each side attempts to subjugate the other to its will. (The Israelis and Palestinians are a good example of this. Neither side trusts the other to form a single country. There are no workable boundaries for two different States. Thus we are left with a state of war with both sides attempting to force a solution on the other.)

In British parliamentary culture there is what is known as a "shadow cabinet." The party out of power lists its leading members according to the positions they would have if they were in power. This speaks to one of my major objections to the parliamentary system and its lack of set elections; it creates a system where a large minority of the government is actively seeking to bring down the government and force new elections. As opposed to the American system where, in theory at least, Republicans, for example, are supposed to accept the fact that they were defeated by Barack Obama, that Obama is now the President and they are obliged to work with him for the next four years.

One of the virtues of the American two party system (and this maybe is what saves the British model as well) is that, regardless of what one might think of the many ideologically unsatisfying outcomes, it forces a certain level of moderation. Regardless of their party affiliation, I can count on the fact that elected officials on the one hand are not out to completely socialize the economy, but on the other support some sort of welfare state with at least some government health care. No one is going to support a religious theocracy, but on the other hand we retain a political rhetoric that acknowledges some sort of general divine providence. The military's dominating presence in the budget is not going to change anytime soon and neither is this country about to return to isolationism and stop interfering with other countries. I am not saying this is good or bad. Just that it provides a government that no one is going to feel pushed to such an extreme as launching an actual civil war.

In Orson Scott Card's two recent mediocre novels, Empire and Hidden Empire, he postulates a near future American civil war between the right and the left. (In truth it is more like secular leftist radicals, trying to destroy this country, going up against moderate patriotic Christians.) I can think of far more creative civil war scenarios. We can start with Evangelical Christians from rural Pennsylvania launching a tea-party with automatic weapons against Manhattan liberals. Manhattan liberals beg an Al Sharpton-like character to use his connections with black street gangs to save them. In a magnanimous gesture of tolerance, a Pat Robertson-like character visits a synagogue in the front lines of Brooklyn to meet with Israeli arms dealers and announces that Jews are not nearly as hated by God as Catholics. This causes a stir when it hits the internet, and the entrance of suburban New Jersey Catholics, armed with a papal indulgence for the sin of birth control for each slain Protestant. (I leave it to readers to continue the scenario.)

The point here is that government hangs on a very narrow thread as people decide whether to trust each other and whether their differences are not so large as to prevent their joining together in bounds of state-building. In many respects, functional governments are not the norm. Normal is Bosnia, Rwanda and Northern Ireland where neighbors kill each other over race, religion, culture or any other good excuse they can find on hand. The question we have to ask ourselves is why we are not in a Bosnia type situation now. There, if not by the grace of sensible moderates, go us.

Izgad 2009: The Highlights

We are finishing off the third complete year of Izgad. This year saw two hundred posts (counting this one). There were over eighteen thousand unique visits. (This was due, in large part, to one particular post.) I know that is not a lot compared to some other sites, but it marks a major step forward for me. To my loyal readers, your comments are appreciated particularly when you disagree with me. In case you missed it, here are some of the highlights.

I taught two-quarters of History 112, Modern European History, for Ohio State. This gave cause for numerous discourses about the nature of history and the historical method. There was my presentation on Wikipedia and why it is not a legitimate source. This would later lead to a letter published in the Columbus Dispatch. In my classes, I did not hold back from issues like slavery, absolutism, and the denial of equal rights to women even at the risk of going against politically correct orthodoxy. I am now teaching at the Hebrew Academy where I have had the opportunity to defend Martin Luther.

I posted my notes of a presentation given by noted atheist biologist P. Z. Myers. This turned out to be my most successful post to date in terms of hits and comments when Myers kindly put up a link. This led to several fruitful exchanges with readers of Myers' Pharyngula, who proved to be quite respectful.

My fantasy series, Asael, is beginning to take shape. For those of you who have not been following the story, there are two narratives about two different Asaels. Asael bar Serariah lives in a monastery library and is studying for the priesthood while trying to come to terms with a series of dreams involving a creature named Vorn and the legacy of his grandfather General Serariah Dolstoy. Decades earlier, Asael's uncle, Asael Dolstoy, has found himself taking a front seat to a game of scacordus and history as his father, Professor Serariah Dolstoy, takes his first steps to becoming the future legend. Both Asaels, in their own ways, must face their world's equivalent of the Enlightenment. So polish your musket, sharpen your bayonet and your Talmudic skills for things are about to get really interesting (and violent). Already there is one well toasted corpse left by an alter of a religious sanctuary, courtesy of an enforcer angel with a flaming sword.

The battle is never finished when you are fighting neurotypical bigots. Unfortunately, I also had to confront zealots from my own side. My problem is that when I talk about rights and liberty I actually mean very specific things. These are not catchphrases that you can slap on to whatever cause you wish to support at the moment. Despite my best intentions, I do seem to manage to get myself into trouble.

There were book reviews and discussions on both works of fiction and non-fiction. Christine Garwood took on flat earthers and creationists to boot. Frank Schaeffer was patient with God. (I would later lose patience with Schaeffer.) Jesus became a good Aryan Nazi. Europe lost its military culture. Harry Potter became a historical source. Did Charles Dickens have a mind-controlling beetle up his skull?

In the world of film, the Book of Esther managed to be butchered despite having some of the best talent Lord of the Rings had to offer. Transformer robots wiped Israel off the map. My favorite neighborhood vampires are starting to prove sparkly and dull, but I still love them and will defend them from the vampires of my past. Avatar might not be as liberal as many of its supporters and detractors believe.

Traveling to the very bowels of the Haredi world yielded numerous interesting conversations and tell us much about what is really going on in that world. I will not back down from exposing the followers of the late Rabbi Avigdor Miller and their apologists. You can blame me if Hershey Park gets banned. On this blog, we engaged in some friendly clashes with Bray of the Fundie over articles of faith and moral principles. At least Bray is not Authentic Judaism.

The summer trip to England yielded numerous adventures and mishaps. From my headquarters next door to Animal Farm, I hung out at Oxford and pursued acts of pilgrimage to shrines of C. S. Lewis, including a pint at his favorite pub. Burning heretics at the stake can be a worthwhile activity as long as it is done in a tolerant and ecumenical fashion. The Chabad couple in Oxford was really nice. I am not sure though if they would want me back anytime soon.

I presented papers at three different conferences. That brings my total of conference presentations up to three. At Purdue, I presented on David Reubeni and his use of violence. At Leeds, I presented on Jewish attacks on philosophy in fifteenth-century Spain. Finally, at West Georgia I presented on Orson Scott Card and the historical method.

My politics are a blend of my rationalist theism and my Libertarianism, which gives me the opportunity to make all sorts of fun arguments. Children should be given political and religious labels. People should be allowed to practice medicine without a license. We should seriously consider giving children the right to vote (and drafting them into the military).

See you all in 2010.

My Presentation at the History and Fiction Conference at the University of West Georgia: Speaker for the Dead: a Historian’s Tale (Part II)

Post I


The three books that make up the Speaker Trilogy are about Ender's search for redemption. At the end of Ender's Game Ender secretly writes a book, called the Hivequeen and the Hegemon, to explain to humanity that the Buggers were not the monsters everyone thought they were. He writes this book under the pseudonym Speaker for the Dead. Having destroyed his own reputation, Ender disappears. The novel Speaker for the Dead opens more than three thousand years later. Ender is still alive, thanks to the laws of relativity, having spent the vast majority of these years traveling at near light speed. Over this time, Ender's book has become the holy scriptures of a major humanist religion, the Speakers for the Dead. While the Speakers do not have a deity or an afterlife, they believe in the value of all intelligent life. They try to tell the life stories of those who have departed this life in the same way that the original Speaker for the Dead spoke about the Buggers.

 Ender operates under the cover of a common speaker. With him is the last hive queen. Ender's hope is to one day find a world in which the Buggers could repopulate and where humans would no longer fear them. He takes his chance on a world called Lusitania; a world on which humanity has once again discovered an alien race, one with stone-age technology, called the Pequeninos. This new first encounter has come with its own set of misunderstandings. Already one scientist sent to study these beings has been murdered. Ender will have to stand forth as Speaker for the Dead, not only to rectify his own xenocide but to stop a new one.

A speaker tells over the life stories of those who had died not to praise or condemn the dead but simply so that those hearing could understand what the deceased stood for and how they understood themselves. The motive of the speaker is that he believes that there is an inherent value to human existence and that by honestly seeking to come to an understanding of an individual one can come to a greater understanding of humanity as a whole. I see the historian as serving a similar function for modern-day society. We are the stewards of the knowledge of societies and worlds that are dead and buried. Their values and all that they stood for are gone and there are few who would even understand them. (Just as our society will one day pass from this earth to be inherited by people who are incapable of even understanding our values and what we stood for.) The historian's task is to serve as a speaker for those who can no longer speak for themselves. Not out of any present-day agenda, but simply because he believes that human beings have intrinsic value and that by honestly coming to terms with human beings, even those no longer here, we can come to a greater understanding of present-day humanity. This is not to say that the past repeats itself, but simply that it gives a context with which to place ourselves.

The historian studies the past, but more than that he lives in the past. If the past is like a foreign country then the historian is like the intelligence officer who has spent decades living in the country he studies and has more of this country within him than that of his native land. While this intelligence officer may never become a native of the country he studies, he will never again be able to truly be a native of the country of his origin either. Not that I believe that historians are infallible oracles from whom the past radiates through. Just as a person today cannot embody anything more than just a perspective of this world so to the historian is simply an expression of one among many legitimate perspectives on the past.

Being a historian involves being both a liberal and a conservative. The historian is a liberal in that he actively seeks to challenge the status quo. He lives with an open mind and with the possibility of other ways of living one's life. On the other hand the field of history, unlike any other field of study besides for religion, is built around defending tradition, the conservative action par excellence. Not to say that the historian necessarily wants to replicate past ways of living in the present. That being said, if the historian did not believe that there was some real value to traditional ways of life he would have chosen a different field.

My goal in teaching history is to challenge students by forcing them to come to terms with the fact that there were sane, moral people who thought in ways that go against everything my students have been taught to believe. For example, most societies in history have tended to be hierarchal in their structure and in particular they have been patriarchal. I take it for granted that all of my students oppose slavery. I wish for them to understand why sane, rational, moral people made different decisions.

I, living in the year 2009, oppose slavery. It is economically inefficient and it undermines the moral fabric of society, both of the slaves and of the slaveholders. The list of objections can go on. Put me back to the United States of 1850 and none of these arguments change, but they are met with different concerns. Slavery is the foundation of the southern economy and the South is unlikely to give up their slaves without a fight that will cost thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives. As for the black slaves themselves, it is questionable that most of them would benefit. They have not, by and large, been trained to live as free people or to take up the responsibilities of citizenship. With all of my visceral hatred of slavery, it would not take me too long until I find myself negotiating with southern slave holders. How about we agree to allow slavery if slaves are given some legal protections, maybe some limits on work hours and bans against bodily mutilation. And if slaveholders refuse to budge, we can simply cave in and give them everything. Slavery, as a backward economic system that has no place in our industrial age, will likely die eventually without anyone doing anything. I would shake hands with the Devil, knowing full well what I was doing. Now we know that those in the North who made such calculations failed. The Union did not hold, there was a civil war and over half a million Americans lost their lives. It does not mean that they were wrong.

As for the defenders of slavery themselves, it should be noted that it is possible to justify slavery without turning to racism. There is no problem as long as you operate on the assumption that society is meant to be hierarchal with some people at the top and some below. This does not even have to mean that those on top are in any way better. Even today we learn to live with the reality that we, as Americans, live on top of the economic pyramid, despite the fact that we have done nothing to deserve it, while much of the world starves. Once we enter our post-Enlightenment world where equality and not hierarchy is the presumed natural order then racism becomes the obvious tool to allow us to continue to enjoy the benefits of the hierarchal model.

I want to bring about just a glimmer of a crisis of faith; that just for a moment my students should wonder whether it is we who are wrong and Plato, Aristotle, and Jefferson Davis who were right. Not that I want my students to stop believing in equality. On the contrary, I want to make them stronger believers. I would want them to go from simply spouting dogma about equality to actively accepting it, fully aware of the price they pay in doing so. By being aware of the Devil's bargains made in the past my students may come to an awareness of the sorts of deals with the Devil made in the present. For is that not what politics is, a deal with the Devil as you compromise and accept a situation that you do not like in the hope of getting some of what you want and avoid getting nothing.

I often wonder how historians of the future will judge us. By treating our predecessors firmly, but with charity, maybe we can begin to set the ground to receive a similar judgment at our own coming trial when we can no longer speak for ourselves, but need a speaker for the dead to stand in our place.

My Presentation at the History and Fiction Conference at the University of West Georgia: Speaker for the Dead: a Historian’s Tale (Part I)

This weekend I was down in Carrollton GA for the History and Fiction Conference hosted by the University of West Georgia. I would like to thank Dr. Julia Farmer for helping to organize the conference and for her personal kindness to me in helping me deal with Sabbath issues. She also gave an excellent presentation on Ariosto and his conflicted attitude toward Charles V. I stayed at the Jameson Inn and the staff there was exceptionally courteous, particularly in terms of the Sabbath. The room was nice too so if anyone reading this finds themselves in the South I strongly recommend this franchise.

 At the conference I spoke about the work of Orson Scott Card, particularly Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, and its influence on me as a historian. I am posting the draft I wrote for the speech. It is largely taken from various blog posts I have done here. My advisor has at times questioned my decision to spend the amount of time that I do writing this blog; time that could surely be better spent on other pursuits like finishing my degree. So now I have managed to actually accomplish something positive with my blog. I did not read from the text so my actual presentation differs slightly. In keeping with my style of teaching, I accompanied the lecture with a slide show of pictures and important concepts.



I would like to thank you the department for inviting me to speak. It is not often that I get to combine my role as a historian and my role as a reader of science fiction. History and science fiction have a lot more income than you might otherwise think. Science fiction, as those who are active consumers of it know, is much more than just space battles, babes in skimpy spacesuits and saving the universe from giant insects. Like history, science fiction, at its best is a study as to the nature of society. Traditionally history has been a study of states; in recent decades we have expanded to a wider conception of society. One could say that we historians are finally catching up to those in science fiction. Today I would like to discuss the work of one particular science fiction writer, Orson Scott Card, particularly his Ender series, and its influence on me as a historian. I was first introduced to Card when I was in high school by my younger brother, who had to read Ender's Game for class. He wanted me to read it so he would not have to. Well that was the start of a very fruitful relationship. The Ender series began with Ender's Game, published in 1985. Ender's Game went on to win both the Hugo and Nebula awards. This was followed the year after with Speaker for the Dead which also went on to win the Hugo and Nebula awards. Card went on to complete the story of Ender Wiggin with Xenocide (1991) and Children of the Mind (1996). In recent years Card has written a parallel series to Ender, the Shadow series, and this past year he has written a bridge novel, Ender in Exile, taking place between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead.

On a general level the Ender series is a magnificent example of science-fiction as a tool to explore the nature of society. There is one of Card's trademark issues, the society building story. A group of random strangers, who have no particular reason to like each other, are thrown together by circumstances. What sort of relationships will they form? Will they prove willing to sacrifice for each other and if so why? Card confronts the issue of history in a more direct way with the figure of the speaker for the dead, whose task it is to explain to those living who the departed where and what they stood for.

Ender's Game is about a boy named Andrew "Ender" Wiggin who is drafted into a military training school. The premise of the school is to gather gifted children from around the world and train the next Napoleon or the next Alexander the Great to fight the Buggers, a race of insect-like aliens that have twice attempted to invade earth and destroy humanity. For those of you who have not read the book, this book is not, as you might think, spaceships, space battles and saving the world with a healthy side does of implied xenophobia, with the aliens standing in for some undesirable group. For one thing this book is only incidentally about battling aliens. This is a story about relationships and the building of a society as bonds of friends are born among the students at Battle School and a corps of future officers is formed to fight the coming war. I read Card as a running meditation as to the question of how one builds and maintains a society? What causes people to join together as a society? How does the individual relate to the surrounding society? What brings an individual to make sacrifices, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice, for the sake of his society? Ender's battle school is a group of competing societies. Ender Wiggin is a genius, his real talent is his ability to handle people. Ender is someone whom other people are willing to follow. People admire him and desire to learn from him and emulate him. Ender in turn is someone who honestly desires to help people. The narrative arch of the novel revolves around Ender building societies. Ender connects to various people and gets them to forge bounds with each other. These people become his subordinate commanders in the coming war against the Buggers.


It would be a mistake to confuse this society with a group of friends. While the societies that populate Orson Scott Card's novels are often quite small and might be passed off as a group of friends, it is not friendship that binds them. Card's plots tend to revolve around the issue of his characters, despite the fact that there may not be any great friendship between them, attempting to build a society together. For their societies to succeed Card's characters must confront the question of what are they willing to sacrifice for it, ultimately for people whom they owe nothing to and have no logical reason to care for. What Card's societies can be are families. Families, particularly in the world of Orson Scott Card, are groups of people thrown together, with complete disregard for compatibility or love. Despite this, family members do form bounds of loyalty with each other, even with family members that they dislike and continue to dislike.

Ender's Game climaxes with Ender and his team defeating the Buggers and saving the world. Ender destroys the Bugger home world, a la the Death Star and Alderaan, with a Molecular Disruption device. Humanity is now free to colonize the galaxy without competition and Ender goes to one of the former Bugger worlds as governor. Living happily ever after? Not exactly. The novel ends with Ender finding the last remaining Bugger hive queen and learning the truth. The Buggers, having finally realized that humans were intelligent beings even if a different kind than the Buggers, had decided to leave humanity in peace. The human fleet that Ender led had destroyed an intelligent race of beings that no longer posed any threat. He, not the Buggers, was the mass murder.

Christian von Dohm and Giving Equal Rights to Muslims

Today, in class, I was planning on talking about Christian von Dohm and his work “Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of the Jews.” Dohm worked for the Prussian government and, as a member of the German Enlightenment, believed in granting Jews equal rights though with certain caveats. Dohm is certainly an interesting example of Enlightenment tolerance and its limitations. Considering, as my father pointed out, that my students were coming back from a break and therefore unlikely to be receptive to serious lecturing and that I, anyway, have been trying to stick more discussion into my classes, I decided to spend the day setting up the issue by posing to them the very modern question of giving Muslims equal rights and what such equal rights might mean. The issue is a difficult one that goes beyond the simplistic one-liners about the importance of having a tolerant free society. Should the State allow Muslim women to wear headscarves? It is in the interest of the State and of society that everyone comes together as one nation. For a group of people to decide to make themselves distinctive by wearing different clothing is to move away from that idea. Particularly in this case where the distinctive garment is meant as an active rejection of the mode of dress of the rest of society. By wearing her headscarf, a Muslim girl is saying to everyone else: “you are all dressed improperly and I reject your values.” This is not the sort of thing in keeping with a desire to be an equal member of society. Can an Imam tell his followers that they have the duty to kill Jews and Christians, including their Jewish and Christian neighbors? Can an Imam quote the passage from the Koran that compares Jews and Christians to monkeys? You cannot, in good faith, say that you want to be an equal citizen just like everyone else and then turn around and spit at people and call them monkeys. Perhaps it should be forbidden for Muslims to talk about this material unless they specifically point out that this does not apply to their modern-day Jewish and Christian neighbors. Government officials should be assigned to major mosques to ensure that this is being carried out. (If you think this is funny you should know that the Prussian government, in the eighteenth century, sent Christian Hebraists to synagogues to make sure that Jews left out the line “for they bow to vanity and nothingness” which was deemed as a slight to Christianity.) If we assume that the Koran is teaching that Jews and Christians are monkeys who should be killed then does that make the Koran “hate literature?” Should we then ban its publication and distribution like many countries do with Mein Kampf? What about the Imam who tells his followers that they are not allowed to get a secular education? The men should learn in madrashas all day, supported by their wives, working at low-paying jobs, and government welfare. Part of being an equal citizen means working for the benefit of society at large. It would seem that the government has some sort of legitimate interest in making sure that children grow up to be productive citizens. Can the government force Muslims to get a secular education up to a certain age and even to study potentially problematic fields such as literature and science? This might even apply to a libertarian government that is willing to allow non-productive members of society to starve to death on the streets. A libertarian government would still have a legitimate interest in having children grow up so that they would know everything needed in order to serve as drafted soldiers. I was impressed with how many of my students picked up on how easily anything they suggested could be used to come after Jews. In a similar line of discussion, Orson Scott Card makes the argument that Muslims, in order to maintain full constitutional protections, must accept that people have the right to convert out of Islam without any threats to their physical safety. Card, who is a Mormon, uses the example of what happened to Mormons in the United States to make his case. The American government forced the Mormon Church to give up polygamy by withholding certain Constitutional protections as long as Mormons continued to uphold polygamy.

Orson Scott Card’s Failure to Make the Case for Traditional Marriage against Robert A. Heinlein

In a recent interview on National Review, Orson Scott Card responded to comparisons between him and Robert A. Heinlein particularly in regards to Ender’s Game and Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Both of these novels are works of military science fiction that deal with wars set in a future world against giant insect-like creatures. According to Card, while he has read a number of Heinlein’s novels, he has never read Starship Troopers and decided never to read it when he was told of the similarity to Ender’s Game. Card goes on to point out that his and Heinlein’s politics could not be further apart; Heinlein was a libertarian while he is an ardent communitarian.

I take it as a given that Card is familiar with a certain aspect of Heinlein’s work connected to his libertarianism that, while it does not appear in Starship Troopers, permeates almost everything else he wrote. I speak of course about Heinlein’s advocacy for polyandrous relationships and group marriage. For example in the Moon is a Harsh Mistress the colonists on the Moon take to group marriage as a practical solution to their situation. They have far more men than women so instead of forcing most of the male population to be celibate (funny that the issue of homosexuality is never raised) every woman has multiple husbands. While the more puritanical citizens of Earth look askance at such behavior, the Moon colonists have embraced this alternative lifestyle and fight to maintain it. Whatever one may think of Heinlein’s ideas, there is no question that he was a brilliant man and one of the truly great visionary writers of the twentieth century. His views cannot merely be cast aside and ignored.

In Ender in Exile, Card’s recently published sequel to Ender’s Game, Card sets up a very similar situation with the soldiers now turned colonists on the former bugger world now named Shakespeare. There is a shortage of women, something that will not be rectified for decades to come when the first batch of colonists arrive. The acting governor of Shakespeare, Vitaly Kolmogorov, makes the very un-Heinlein like decision to maintain monogamy. He has all the women distributed in marriage by lottery, with a little cheating on the side to cover certain particular situations. All men who do not win out in this lottery are forced, in theory at least, into a life of celibacy. In its own way Card’s decision to defend monogamy under such extreme conditions is equally as radical as Heinlein’s willingness to abandon it.

Card puts a human face, Sel Menach, to the situation and then turns him into his mouth-piece. Sel nobly turns down his assistant, Afraima, who comes onto him. (As a side point of interest, I should mention that both of these characters happen to be Jewish.) Not only does Sel turn her down, he also asks that he either be allowed to quit or to have her fired so that she would no longer serve as a temptation. This whole bit is a remarkably lousy piece of writing that serves no purpose in furthering the book other than to foreshadow an equally lousy scene later on in the book when Ender has to keep his own teenage hormones in check.

I have no problem with Card arguing for traditional social values. Particularly in this present climate, we need every voice we can get. And Card has generally been one of the more effective voices out there. It is precisely because of the situation we are in today, though, that we need something better than: “Monogamy has been proven, over and over, to be the optimum social arrangement. It’s not about genes, it’s about children – they have to grow up into the society we want them to maintain.” (Pg. 104) What exactly is so great about monogamy and when has it been proven over and over to be the best to the extent that one would make such a sacrifice when Heinlein offers such a tempting solution?

A Blog to Take Over the World (Part I)

In the novel Ender’s Game, while Ender Wiggin is away at Battle School, his siblings back on earth, Peter and Valentine Wiggin, become, in essence, bloggers as part of Peter’s plan to become a world leader. The idea being that on the net he can assume an identity of his own choosing and not be bound by the fact that he is only twelve years old. Through the net, his ideas can reach anyone in the world. Thus he can become a person of influence, someone whom people across the world would willingly listen to. Orson Scott Card published Ender’s Game in 1985, before the rise of the internet so it truly was clairvoyant of him to appreciate how something like the internet could change how information is exchanged and how this could affect the discourse of power. The internet allows a person to reach everyone without any mediation, thus bypassing the traditional guardians of public discourse. The moment I have the internet to reach people with then I do not have to work for a major newspaper, hold public office or even hold an advanced degree and a tenured post at a prestigious university to be a major player in the public discourse. This makes me, a lone individual, powerful in ways that I could never have been before the internet.


Peter takes on the identity of Locke (a reference to the seventeenth-century English political philosopher John Locke) and Valentine take on the identity of Demosthenes (the famous fifth century BCE Athenian orator). While one might expect someone with designs on taking over the world to become a rabble-rouser, playing to the prejudices of the masses, Peter’s Locke does nothing of the sort. It is Valentine’s Demosthenes who is the rabble-rouser. She plays a populist conservative, who whips up popular hysteria, particularly against Russia. In this role, she serves as a foil for Locke, who is a voice of moderation and tolerance. In this capacity, Demosthenes is someone whom Locke can argue against, which is why Peter brought her into this project in the first place. Peter chooses not to play the role of the rabble-rouser because he recognizes that, while such a position can easily lead to widespread popular support, it will close off any chance of gaining the respect of the intellectual and political elites, which is what Peter craves. (This is Card making fun of what he sees as the elitist liberal establishment. In reality, they are just as prejudiced and open to manipulation as the populace they heap scorn upon; it just requires a different and more subtle lever to push them.)


Initially, Demosthenes is much more successful than Locke at gaining popularity. This makes perfect sense considering the nature of their styles and whom they are trying to attract. Peter understood this going in, yet it still frustrates him. He perseveres, though, and eventually succeeds. Over the course of the events narrated in the Shadow series, Peter rises to become the Hegemon and leads a united planet into a golden age of expansion into space.

Peter Wiggin is a model for me. Not that I really have any plans on taking over the world, though I do like to joke about that. I do wish to be Locke though. The internet is full of Demostheneses of both the liberal and conservative variety, spewing invective and playing to people’s passion. This goes to the very nature of the medium itself. In such a crowded marketplace the one who shouts the loudest gets heard. People like a spectacle and take a certain pleasure in beholding people saying extreme things. This is the secret to Ann Coulter’s success. I want to have a positive effect on the world. I believe that my background and my Asperger syndrome allow me to have a different perspective on things from most people and a message to give them. I do not see myself as trying to convince people to become more religious, less religious, liberal or secular. I see this blog as giving people an alternative vision of the world; one that transcends the categories that people are used to.

(To be continued ...)

Bella’s Wedding, Bedding and Surprise: A Review of Breaking Dawn (Part II)

(For part I see here.)

Book one of Breaking Dawn deals Bella’s wedding, bedding, and the discovery that she, against all possibility is pregnant with Edward’s child. This book is 138 pages. In essence, Meyer took what should have been Breaking Dawn and lopped off the first three-hundred to four-hundred pages to get right to the chase. It skips the engagement and starts right before Bella’s and Edward’s wedding and goes through their honeymoon. I was looking forward to having Bella and Edward being engaged, planning their wedding and have Alice take everything over. We got a hint of that at the end of Eclipse, but I wanted more of that. Also, the lead up to the wedding is precisely the sort of “dramatic” tension that Meyer thrives at: is it a wedding or a funeral? By skipping over the lead up to the wedding, Meyer missed out on what could have been her finest hour.

Unlike Eclipse, which used Alice quite a bit, Breaking Dawn lets Alice slink off to the side. It skips out on Alice planning the wedding. Books two and three also reduce her to bit parts. She gets sidelined with headaches and then, when things get tough, she runs off with Jasper leaving the Cullens in the lurch. Granted this is all about her pulling a very Alice stunt, but I wanted Alice to be Alice at the center of the action. I can only take a certain amount of Bella and Edward. Bella having to go up against Alice balances things out.

As to the bedding part; Meyer has until now been able to succeed, despite her religious beliefs, at writing a love story because she has not needed to write any actual sex into it. She kept things at a place she was comfortable with, which allowed her to write effectively. With Breaking Dawn she has written herself into a corner; she is out of her comfort zone and seems like a deer caught in the headlights.

Book two deals with Bella’s pregnancy and comes out to 215 pages. This book is interesting because it switches perspective away from Bella, which is how, with the exception of the last chapter of Eclipse, the entire series has been written. Meyer turns to Jacob Black, the werewolf. This tactic manages to inject some life into the book and goes a fair way toward saving it. Jacob gets into an interesting and quite Cardian situation with his fellow werewolves, which Meyer handles effectively. The main issue of book two is Bella’s insistence on bringing her child to term, despite the fact that it is killing her. In this, she finds an unexpected ally in Rosalie, the one Cullen who has been against her. Obviously, there is a pretty strong pro-life message wrapped up in all of this. There was one thing that really upset me about this book. Edward, in an attempt to get Bella to give up the child, tells Jacob something that was just weird, really out of character and just plain wrong. I know that Edward is in panic mode, but still. This was just another example of Meyer not being able to handle sexuality past a certain point and getting herself stranded.

At 387 pages, book three is by far the longest and comes close to matching the original Twilight novel in length. This book deals with the Volturi coming after Bella and Edward’s newborn child, claiming that it violates the rules and therefore must be eliminated. The Cullens, in a very Cardian maneuver, get help from the local werewolf population down at La Push but also reach out to every vampire they can get to come, not to fight the Volturi but to “witness” to them, that the Cullens have broken no law. The struggle with the Volturi comes right out of the society building story. The Cullens are a counter society and the Volturi, as the establishment, seek any excuse to eliminate them. This notion of the Cullens and their society-building story is neatly summed up in a little speech that Meyer gives to a vampire named Garrett:

I have witnessed the bonds within this family – I say family and not coven. These strange golden-eyed ones deny their very natures. But in return have they found something worth even more, perhaps, than mere gratification of desire? I’ve made a little study of them in my time here, and it seems to me that intrinsic to this intense family binding – which makes them possible at all – is the peaceful character of this life of sacrifice. There is no aggression here like we all saw in the large southern clans that grew and diminished so quickly in their wild feuds. There is no thought for domination. (Breaking Dawn pg. 717-18.)

Breaking Dawn has its moments and is definitely a worthwhile read, despite my criticisms. I did have high expectations for this book; I hoped that Meyer could accomplish what J. K Rowling did with Deathly Hallows. This was not to be. What we received were three abridged books in which much of what made the Twilight series so much fun had simply leaked out. I still enjoyed Breaking Dawn immensely. Even when she is not at her best, Meyer is still one of the most gifted people in the business and I eagerly await her future work. (Maybe she can do a spinoff about Alice.) This will probably, though, not go into my comfort pile, books, like Harry Potter and the rest of the Twilight series, that I go back to again and again whenever I need a smile.

Oh, and by the way, I am so naming my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster.

Bella’s Wedding, Bedding and Surprise: A Review of Breaking Dawn (Part I)

A while back I came up with a theory as to what Stephenie Meyer would do with the Twilight series. Eclipse left us with Bella agreeing to marry the vampire love of her life, Edward, having survived three books still alive, human and, remarkably enough, still a virgin. I thought of Breaking Dawn as offering a checklist of getting Bella wedded and bedded and undead. My thinking was that instead of going with the obvious ending of having Bella being turned into a vampire, Meyer would go through with the wedding and the bedding, but then have Bella get pregnant, with a human child. (The books never said that vampires could not have children.) Since Edward and Bella are a unique couple, it is perfectly reasonable that the vampires would be unaware that such a thing could be possible. Having a child would change Bella’s priorities. Now she would be determined, one, to protect her child and keep it human and, two, to stay human for her child's sake. The child, once it is born, would be some sort of special genius capable of tipping the balance of power in the supernatural world, taking the series into serious Orson Scott Card territory. The Volturi, the vampire mafia, would come after Bella, her child, and the Cullens. They would be interested in the child and the fact that Bella would now have violated the terms of Alice’s agreement with them (Back in New Moon, Alice explained Bella’s presence with them by saying that the Cullens were planning on turning her.) would give them the perfect excuse. This would lead to the Cullens having to fight the Volturi. To do this they would have to form an alliance with the werewolves and various other friends such as the Danali and Jasper’s old comrades Peter and Charlotte. This would climax in a cataclysmic battle, which would take place, somewhere right outside Forks. I think it is important that an author has the spine to kill off major characters. Hopefully, Meyer would allow for some heavy casualties and kill off a few of the Cullens, Carlisle being a likely target. Meyer might even take out Edward or Bella.

I figured this storyline would take three books to tell. The first book would have Bella getting wedded, bedded and pregnant. It would also establish the Volturi as something far worse then what they seemed until now, some old friends of Carlisle, who went after humans but kept the vampire world under some form of control; a minor evil which stops an even greater evil. The second book would deal with Bella’s pregnancy, the birth of her child and would have the opening rounds with the Volturi, leading to some great crises. Killing off Carlisle, much as J. K. Rowling killed off Albus Dumbledore, would fit nicely. Finally, in the third book, we can wrap everything up with a grand royal rumble of supernatural creatures, with Bella ever in the center and commenting on it all in her unflappable straightforward fashion, which is what makes these books tick.

I nixed this idea for two reasons. The first being that I checked one of the established Twilight websites and it specifically stated in its FAQs that vampires could not have children. I assumed that someone had posed this theory to Meyer and she downed it. The second thing was that I found out that Breaking Dawn was going to be the final Twilight book, so Meyer clearly planned to wrap everything up here and not open up a whole new storyline. While not to give too much away, as it turns out my theory, while not completely accurate, was quite close; so much for that website. As for this being a three-book storyline, Meyer took it and crammed it into one 754 page book. Curiously enough, unlike the previous books, Breaking Dawn is divided into three books, which follow the basic plot structure I outlined. Because of this, I intend to deal with Breaking Dawn as three separate books.


(To be continued …)

The Society Building Story and its Implications for Individualism and Faith

I have written a number of posts dealing with Orson Scott Card, Stephenie Meyer and their use of society building stories in their fiction. Before leaving the issue (for now), I thought I should say a few words to wrap things up. In looking back at my posts on the topic I realized that I failed to adequately explain why I think this issue is so important. Stephenie Meyer’s decision to follow Card’s lead is not a matter of artistic copying but of a shared critique of modern individualism and a shared religious vision.

At its heart, the society building story, in which a small group of individuals, with little reason to care for one another, are thrown together and attempt to build a society with one another, possesses an ambiguous relationship with individualism. If one wanted to be simplistic one could even accuse it of being anti-individualism. The characters start off as relatively independent individuals. The plot turns on their decision to surrender their independence and tie themselves down to the needs of the group. For example, in The Host, Wanderer surrenders herself to helping her community of free humans. With Ender, however strong he might be, he needs some sort of group to give himself up to. This is a far cry from the sort of do it alone heroic individualism at the heart of so much of modern fiction and of science fiction as well. This is not the work of Robert A. Heinlein; this is most definitely not Ayn Rand.

One could even link this to the religious beliefs of Card and Meyer. Card and Meyer are both Mormons, a religious group known for its strong sense of group discipline. Card and Meyer could therefore be read as anti-moderns, whose message is that, to find fulfillment, one must reject the individualism of modern secular society and submit oneself to the demands of the group; much in the same that Mormons and followers of other religions allow themselves to be controlled by the dictates of their group.

In a sense, though, the society building story used by Card and Meyer is strongly individualistic. The characters freely choose to bind themselves to their newly built society. So this act of society building is ironically very much the act of individuals; they could not have succeeded unless they were such strong individuals. Also, this act of society building is done in defiance of some other society. Wanderer rejects the perfect society of the Souls. The Cullen family of Twilight, by their very existence, is a rejection of the Volturi and their value system. Ender’s Dragon army fights the system at the Battle School even as it plays its mock battles against other armies.

This ambiguity about individualism is also at the core of work of Robert A. Heinlein, the father of heroic individualism within science fiction, as well. In certain respects, Heinlein is a forerunner for both Card and Meyer. While Starship Troopers glorifies the individual soldier it is also a remarkable ode to duty and an indictment of modern society’s inability to install a sense of duty and responsibility within its members. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress can be read as a society building novel itself. It is about a computer led rebellion by the residents of the Moon against the rule of Earth. The people living on Heinlein’s future Moon reject the paternal statism of the countries of Earth and strive to build their own libertarian state. The real struggle in the story is not over whether the people of the Moon can defeat the occupation forces from Earth but if such a diverse group of people can band together as one group.

Card and Meyer are hardly supporters of the sort of polyamorous marriages that Heinlein advocated. Card and Meyer belong to the mainstream Mormon Church, not to one of the polygamous sects, so they are not into alternative lifestyles. As I see it, their use of society building stories has a distinctively religious component to it. Any religious group operating in the western world today operates, to a certain extent, on a similar model as the societies found in the work of Card and Meyer. All religious groups are, in one way or another, counter-cultures. In a secular state, the government cannot be used to advance the cause of any religious group. Even more importantly, in a secular society, the very ethos of the society is contrary to the values of established religions. One can see communities of faith as collections of renegades from the general society who have been thrown together by circumstances other than their personal like for each other and must join together to form their own alternative society.

The society building story as it is used by Card and Meyer carries the distinct stamp of their Mormon faith. Mormonism is a religion organized in a highly authoritarian manner, but also one in which power is closely centered at the base. The Mormon religion does exert a tremendous amount of control over the day to day lives of its followers; members most give tithes to the Church and serve the Church in the field as missionaries. That being said the Church maintains no paid clergy; instead, leading members volunteer to serve for a fixed period of time. What is truly fascinating about how Mormons operate is their system of wards. Wards are small chapters, usually encompassing a single city or neighborhood. For Mormons, wards operate as an extension of the family; there are ward meeting and ward picnics. Mormons fall under the authority of a given ward simply by living in a given area. They do not get to choose who their fellow ward members are; if they do not get along with other members of their ward they do not have the option of breaking away and creating a new ward. (Considering all the fights and splits that go on in synagogues, I can see the advantages of such a system.) So an individual Mormon’s relationship to a ward runs in terms of a society building story. One is thrown in with a group of people that one has no particular reason to care for. In such a situation, there is no other choice but to build for oneself, out of such material, a society, and even a family.

Humans Battling Mind Controlling Aliens: A Struggle of Cardian Proportions (Part I)

A few months ago I did a series of posts on Orson Scott Card and his influence on Stephenie Meyer. (See posts I, II, and III.) Their stories are built around the issue of society building; groups of people are thrown together, who may not have any particular love for each other, yet come to form a bond with one another and, from that bond, create a small society or even a family. This issue could have been explored further though I moved on to other things. Little did I know that Meyer would thrust me back into this issue by making her next book even more explicitly “Cardian” than even Twilight. There are things on the surface of Meyer’s new novel, the Host, that call attention to Card. This is a work of science fiction and the back cover of the book has a blurb from Card, praising Meyer. At a deeper level though Meyer has, once again, studied Card and has proven herself to be a most diligent and worthy student.

In what has now become her trademark, Meyer takes a stock horror story and fashions it as a charming and utterly captivating romance. The Host deals with an invasion of Earth by aliens, known as Souls, which insert themselves into the bodies of human hosts and take control of them. This type of story has been done many times before. Such aliens have appeared as the villains in Robert A. Heinlein’s Puppet Masters and more recently the Animorphs series by K. A Applegate, to name some examples off the top of my head. For those of you who do not remember, the Animorphs was a series of children’s books that dominated the field of children’s literature back in the late nineties, before the rise of Harry Potter. In Meyer’s telling of the story, these parasitical aliens are not evil beings out to conquer and enslave humanity. On the contrary, they are creatures with highly developed moral sensibilities. They follow a strict code of Utilitarian ethics; their actions serve to create the greatest level of happiness for the greatest amount of beings. By taking over Earth, they have created a better, more ethical humanity in which people love one another and strive to serve the common good. The Souls, having conquered Earth, have not destroyed human culture. On the contrary, they continue to live as a human society, albeit a perfected one. Their hosts continue to live their human lives, holding down human jobs and raising human families.

The main character of the novel, Wanderer, is a Soul inserted into a young woman named Melanie Stryder. This should have allowed Wanderer to live a perfectly happy life inside Melanie’s body and with Melanie’s knowledge and memories. The problem for Wanderer is that Melanie has refused to go away and continues to live on. Worse, Wanderer finds herself inundated with memories of Melanie’s former life particularly of her younger brother, Jamie, and the man she loved, Jared, both of whom are now living in one of the last hidden free human holdouts. Haunted by these memories, Wanderer finds herself taking on Melanie’s connection to them and searching for them.

In a sense, this is a story about three different characters in one body. There is Wanderer, Melanie, and Melanie’s body. The lines between these characters are blurred, creating a fourth, completely different character. Wanderer is now living in Melanie’s body but has to deal with Melanie speaking in her head, which of course used to be Melanie’s head. Furthermore, Wanderer is affected by the fact that the body she lives in is Melanie’s. This places certain constraints on Wanderer; by taking on Melanie’s body she is no longer Wanderer as she was but another version of Melanie. The conqueror, by the very act of conquering, has been conquered.

(To be continued …)

The Adolescent Military Genius versus the Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: An Analysis of Orson Scott Card and his Influence on Twilight. (Part III)

(This is the continuation of a series of posts. See here and here. I wrote the first two parts of this piece back in February. Sorry for the delay.)

As with the work of Orson Scott Card, the issue of society/family building and maintenance plays a large role in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, lying just beneath the romance and the vampires. The Cullen family is a perfect example of the Cardian society/family. The Cullens are a group of seven individual vampires brought together by circumstances beyond their control. What keeps them together is not friendship or love but their shared commitment to a “vegetarian” lifestyle; they do not kill humans, just an occasional grizzly bear or mountain lion.

The Cullen family can be seen as a support group or even as a religious congregation. They are bound together by more than common beliefs; they need each other to keep on the path. With the exception of Carlyle, none of the Cullens can be described as a non-threat to any human within a several-mile radius. Left to their own devices they would turn lethal and they all know it. The Cullens, therefore, keep a constant watch on each other to make sure that no “accidents” happen.

Meyer does an excellent job striking a balance between keeping the Cullens likable and making them threatening. The Cullens have their charm, but they could go off on a killing spree and it would still make perfect sense in terms of their characters. It is more than just a matter of each of the Cullens having an overwhelming desire to kill anyone on sight or smell. Underneath their lovable exteriors, they are, to put it simply, evil.

The fact that the Cullens, as vampires, are irredeemably evil is the foundation of their whole way of life. They believe that they are evil satanic beings and crimes against nature. They, therefore, hate themselves and strive to go against the most basic element of their nature, the need to kill.

This is essentially the doctrine of human total depravity, which many Christian groups believe in. The fact that Meyer made Carlyle an ex-Anglican minister is probably not a coincidence. He is preaching a religious doctrine, complete with heaven, hell, and salvation. At its basis, though, Carlyle’s faith is one built around the belief in the utter depravity of himself and of the congregation he now leads. Whether the Cullens actually kill any innocent people or not is beside the point; the very fact that they can be tempted already puts them beyond the pale of righteousness. Carlyle is actually the religious optimist in the group. He believes that vampires have souls and might have a hope of getting into heaven, as opposed to Edward, who believes that they are all damned no matter how righteous they manage to be.

We view the Cullens through the lens of Bella, a modern human teenager. In theory, she believes in God and is a person of faith but, in practice, she is fairly indifferent to matters of religion. As a modern, she takes an optimistic view of human beings. She tends toward the belief that people, when left to their own devices, are basically decent. She takes a very non-judgmental attitude toward people, believing that people can be left to their own devices and they will find their way to righteousness. Because of this, she has no way of comprehending the notion of seeing oneself as a totally depraved sinner, standing under the glare of a judging God. It should be enough for God that we are basically nice people, right? The Cullens, with their very unmodern religious views, is a culture shock for her. Part of the fun of her character is how she plows straight through the world of the Cullens with her modern female teenager logic, taking everything in stride.

The running debate between Bella and Edward, over whether she should be made into a vampire or not, should be understood within this religious context. Edward wishes, above all else, to protect Bella’s soul. Bella does not think in terms of souls; for her, the only issue is whether she might end up killing someone in the end, but she is confident that the Cullens will be able to protect her until she develops the sort of self-control that they have. For Edward, it is irrelevant if Bella ends up killing someone, she would still be, for all eternity, an utterly depraved monster just like him. Part of Bella’s development as a character is her coming around to the religious worldview of the Cullens, with its concern for souls, heaven, hell, damnation, and above all else their view of themselves as totally depraved. By the end of Eclipse, Bella, even though she intends to join the Cullens, has come to the realization as to the true nature of the stakes involved. The fact that Edward seems to be willing to go along with this would indicate that his religious views have also evolved at least somewhat; he now is willing to acknowledge the theoretical possibility of salvation.

Ultimately the Cullens are a model for a religious society. It is not a religious society as most people would think of the term. They are not a group of righteous, sin-free people, or even people who think they are righteous and sin-free, joining together because they believe that they are better than everyone else. The religious society that the Cullens form is a society created by utterly depraved sinners for utterly depraved sinners and out of the recognition that they are utterly depraved sinners. The fact that they form this society does not make them any less depraved; what it does do is give them the strength to transcend their own depravity.

The Adolescent Military Genius versus the Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: An Analysis of Orson Scott Card and his Influence on Twilight. (Part II)

(This is the continuation of a previous post. See here.) 

 

It would be a mistake to confuse a society with a group of friends. While the societies that populate Orson Scott Card’s novels are often quite small and might be passed off as a group of friends, it is not friendship that binds them. Often the societies in Orson Scott Card’s novels are built by people thrown together against their will. They do not necessarily like each and often never come to like each other. Despite this fact, there is a bond that does form between the characters. Card’s plots tend to revolve around the issue of his characters, despite the fact that there may not be any great friendship between them, attempting to build a society together. For their societies to succeed, Card’s characters must confront the question of what are they willing to sacrifice for it, ultimately for people whom they owe nothing to and have no logical reason to care for. 

The relationships that Ender builds are very different than what you find in Harry Potter. As Dumbledore points out, Harry’s strength comes from his love for his friends, Ron and Hermione. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are a group because they like and care for each other. Their bonds to each other came out of their own free will. The contrast to Harry is Lord Voldemort who, while he has followers, people who worship him as a god and are even willing to die for him, has no friends. Voldemort is completely self-sufficient, loves nothing to him and he has no need for anyone’s love. This, ultimately, is Voldemort’s undoing.

Ender has a lot in common with Lord Voldemort. He is set up from the very beginning as a loner. The people who run the Battle School, purposely isolate him, surround him with people who are hostile to him and, in one case, would go so far as to try to kill him. When Ender succeeds at forming bonds with people he is immediately taken away to another group. Because of this Ender is forced to turn completely inward. The only person he can rely on is himself; he has no friends. Ender’s victory over the Battle School system is that, despite his inability to form friendships, he does build relationships, many of which prove capable of overcoming the limitations of time and space. What Card’s societies can be are families. Families, particularly in the world of Orson Scott Card, are groups of people thrown together, with complete disregard for compatibility or love. Despite this, family members do form bonds of loyalty with each other, even with family members that they dislike and continue to dislike. This connection between societies and families is brought home by the fact that the one close emotional bond that Ender maintains over his years at the Battle School is with his sister Valentine on earth. She reunites with him after the battle with the Buggers and goes with him into exile. In the later books, Ender marries a woman named Novinha and becomes a stepfather to her children. In addition, Ender has a daughter of sorts, a computer entity named Jane. These characters, and in a more abstract way the various residents of Lusitania, become a new society for Ender to deal with. Card purposely blurs the line between society and family to the point that they become extensions of each other. 

Considering Card’s emphasis on societies/families, it is not a coincidence that Card is an outspoken fan of the television show Firefly. In Card’s review of the Firefly film, Serenity, he commented that: 

On that ship [Serenity] we had an interlocking community with a history, rather like what has been a-building with Lost and what was developed over the years with Friends. … The key to this kind of movie is that you create a community that the audience wishes they belonged to, with a leader that even audience members who don't follow anybody would willingly follow. That will be the key to Ender's Game if the movie is ever successfully made; and it is the key to Serenity. 

Firefly and Lost, for that matter, are stories about people thrown together by chance. These people do not necessarily like each other and they may even hate each other, yet they are forced to come together as a common group.

The Adolescent Military Genius versus the Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: An Analysis of Orson Scott Card and his Influence on Twilight. (Part I)

Stephenie Meyer, the bestselling author of the Twilight series, has a lot in common with the legendary science fiction author, Orson Scott Card. They are both active members of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). More importantly, while neither of them is known for religious novels per se, they both write from a background of faith and bring a strongly religious, though not particularly Mormon, vision to their work. Beyond this, I would suggest that the Twilight series contains certain Cardian elements. This should not be surprising as Stephenie Meyer has publicly stated that she is a fan of Card’s work.

I read Card as a running meditation as to the question of how one builds and maintains a society? What causes people to join together as a society? How does the individual relate to the surrounding society? What brings an individual to make sacrifices, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice, for the sake of his society? These issues underline almost all of Card’s work. For the purposes of this post I will focus on Card’s most famous work, Ender’s Game, and it various sequels.

On the surface, Ender’s Game is about a war between humans and an alien race known as the Buggers. Andrew “Ender” Wiggin attends a school for brilliant children. The purpose of this school is to create the next brilliant military commander, another Napoleon Bonaparte or Alexander the Great. The children at this school are being trained for one thing only, war. As such their primary education revolves around military strategy games, either computer games or the mock combat of the battle room.

The war against the Buggers is only an incidental part of the story. What Card is interested in is this Battle school as a group of competing societies. While the main character, Ender Wiggin, is a genius, his real talent is his ability to handle people. Ender is someone whom other people are willing to follow. People admire him and desire to learn from him and emulate him. Ender in turn is someone who honestly desires to help people. The narrative arch of the novel revolves around Ender building societies. Through the various stations that Ender finds himself, whether as a Launchie, as an unvalued member of Salamander army, as a valued member of Rat army, as a Toon leader in Phoenix army, or as the head of Dragon Army, Ender connects to various people and gets them to forge bounds with each other. Many of these people, such as Petra Arkanian and Bean, eventually become his subordinate commanders in the coming war against the Buggers.

What is interesting about Ender’s character is that, even though he is this great leader, he is a reluctant leader and does not seek power or recognition. Ender does not put himself at the center of the societies he builds. He always remains off to the side and alone.

The foil for Ender is his older brother, Peter Wiggin. Peter possesses similar gifts as Ender. The difference, though, between Peter and Ender, and the reason why the Battle school never took Peter, is that Peter lacks a firm moral base; Peter manipulates people for his own ends and is completely untrustworthy. While Ender is away from home at the Battle school playing his war games, Peter plays his own game, attempting, under the pseudo-name of Locke, to become a world leader. What is so interesting, though, about how Card deals with this character is that, while Peter may be immoral, he is not evil nor is he the villain of the story. Over the course of the novel and its sequels, Peter manages to do a tremendous amount of good even if the things that he does always seem to incidentally help him.

Ender and Peter can be seen as models of two different kinds of leaders, who come to be the center of two different kinds of societies. Peter is a political leader, who desires power over other people. He accomplishes his goals by making it in people’s interest to put him in power. He eventually becomes the Hegemon of the entire earth and leads mankind in its expansion to the stars. Ender is a spiritual leader. Even though he leads the first human colony to a foreign planet and becomes its governor, he gives up his post for a life of exile. His legacy is a book that he writes called the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. This book becomes a bible for those humans who go off to settle the galaxy and it spawns a religious movement known as the Speakers for the Dead. In the end, while Peter may have been a great political leader, nothing survives him. While Ender does not build any physical empires, he creates a society, beyond any physical boundaries, that lasts for thousands of years.

(To be continued ...)

My Friend the Mormon

My Mormon friend, CJ, recently wrote me an email commenting on my posts about my meeting with some Mormon missionaries. (See here and here.) CJ himself spent two years as a missionary in Peru. He is the sort of religious, intelligent, decent person that my parents probably would have wanted me to turn out like. (Just a Jewish version though) We had an interesting back and forth between the two of us, which CJ has kindly allowed me to reprint here.

CJ
Well I do appreciate you getting to know the church before you past judgment on Mormons. So many times even my closets friends never really took the time to understand its basic principals. I do realized that you are probably not looking to convert, but just to know more information. It was pretty obvious from your method of getting the book of Mormon and because I know you. By the way I have like 4 extra copies, so if you ever lose the one you have I got your back. If you are ever interested Mormons have other canonical books as well that I could get to you a free copy as well. But anyway, I think some of your concerns are quite valid, especially regarding whether a spiritual experience is from god or not. This is something that has worried me and many people I taught as a missionary. But I think there are ways to know, it just might take longer than people are willing to invest. Although I do disagree with you on one point, just because we don’t believe in Thomas Aquinas or any other post New Testament religious philosopher doesn’t disqualifies from being Christians. I always have viewed Christians as people who believe Christ is the Messiah (and subsequently follow his teachings). But I think you were more concerned about the Christian tradition than beliefs per se. So in that sense you are right. By the way the missionaries are only 19-21 years olds that haven’t had much university training. There are Mormons that are more knowledgeable regarding Mormonism versus classical Christianity. They don’t really train missionaries to encounter people have a master’s degree from Yeshiva University. (Although I do know a Mormon who went there). So that’s what I think. I still think you have good potential for becoming a Jewish Mormon Missionary. I not sure we can work that one out (you would probably actually have to become Mormon), but it would be hilarious none the less.

BZ
Well there is one Mormon, who goes to OSU, whom I have great respect for. ;)
I greatly admire Orson Scott Card, though I have never met him in person. What other holy books do Mormons have? The life of Joseph Smith, anything else? Let me get through the book of Mormon. Lord knows when that will happen. As to the issue of how one defines being a Christian. There is an evangelical Christian group known as Jews for Jesus. They argue that they are Jews who simply believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and part of the Trinity. The Jewish community as a whole refuses to view them as part of the Jewish religion. I would justify this stance by saying that Jews for Jesus is outside of the Jewish tradition and is part of the Christian tradition. In this sense Jews for Jesus is different from Reform and Conservative Judaism which, while I may disagree with their understanding of Judaism, I still view as part of the Jewish tradition and therefore a type of Judaism.You view Catholics and Protestants as Christians even though you disagree with them. Do you view people who say that Jesus is not a divine figure as still being Christians? I believe in Jesus. I believe that he was a great moral teacher. I have no problem with saying that he was born of a virgin, did miracles or that he ascended to heaven alive. I do not believe that he was God nor do I believe that he fulfilled Isaiah 11. Can I be counted as a Christian? You believe that Christianity went to pot after Paul. I believe that Christianity went to pot with Paul. As to our 19-21 year old Christian missionaries, I assume they are going to run into educated Christians at some point, who are likely going to do to them what I did. There is no way that you are going to be able to talk to such Christians unless you can talk about Aquinas or Augustine. Or have the Mormons simply decided to only talk to Christians who know nothing about Christianity. Whats the story behind the Mormon who went to YU? Did he go to one of the graduate schools or did he convert to Mormonism later in life?

CJ
… We have two other canonical books along with other inspired commentaries. In truth Mormons have a pretty loose definition of scripture. We believe revelation is a continual process.
As for defining who is a Christian and who isn’t really does not concern me. I am well aware of the Jews for Jesus movement and if they or you or anybody else wants to consider themselves Christians, I don’t really care. I just wanted to affirm that Mormons are Christians since they are followers of Christ. Hence the real name of the church: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In regards to Missionaries, I think it is unfair to expect them to have read Aquinas or Augustine, since they don’t even believe it. Would you expect a Rabbi to have read the Book of Mormon? (Or even one of the more obscure religious tracts from Mormonism.) I sure many have, but I would not view it as an expectation. We seek out all classes of people, not just the uneducated. I myself taught people as a missionary that were in the seminary and who knew a lot more about Aquinas and Augustine that I would ever hope to. But my message wasn’t about Aquinas or Augustine. The message of the missionaries is inherently spiritual. There are other Mormons that could and would be elated to discuss medieval religious philosophy, if you want to converse with them I would be glad to provide their email.
As for my friend who went to Yeshiva. To my knowledge he has been a Mormon all his life. I believe he did a master’s degree there. In what, I do not know.
I hope I don’t sound too contentious. I just want to be well understood. I not sure we are every going to agree on some of these issues, but I do enjoy discussing them. …

BZ
… My problem with the missionaries was not that they had not read Augustine or Aquinas, I myself have only read bits and pieces, but, from what I could tell, they did not know who these people were. I asked them how Mormons understood the concept of Grace and how their conception of it compared to someone like John Calvin. I got a blank stare from them. They should have gotten this in high school history. Yes I know our school systems stink, but that only means that it was all the more important for whoever trained them to make sure they knew this.By the way I have yelled at Rabbis before, not because they had not heard of the book of Mormon per se, but because they did not know what the Four Gospels were. Side story, I once, as part of a quiz, asked the students in my section what the name of the Christian Bible was and one student said the King James. I also asked them to name three early Christians. Someone put down Augustus. With the campaign of Mitt Romney the whole issue of are Mormons Christian becomes more of an academic issue. Let us imagine that a member of Jews for Jesus was running for public office. I would be offended if the media were to say that he was a Jew. I would have no objection to voting for the man if I thought he was a good candidate. All the best.

CJ
Well those missionaries must just not be very good, because I know that John Calvin is mentioned in their teaching guide, so they need to do reading. They gave us two hours in the morning to study but like school some take more advantage of it than others. I must admit though that we have in some way been trying to address some of your concerns. About 3 years ago they changed some of the training that missionaries receive to include more history. So although I think Augustine and Aquinas are a stretch, at least in theory they should know more. In fact the new teaching manual has information of non-Christian religions as well like Buddhism and Islam. I would agree though that ignorance about religion in general is high. Today asked my class about the story of Moses. One of our readings had made a passing reference to him. I got a bunch of blank stares and had to explain in detail his escape from Egypt in order for them to understand the reference. It was quite ridiculous. Oh well. I guess that’s why they have people like us teaching in University.
Chao,

And Now a Taste of Something Whigish

A friend of mine, who works as an archivist and has an interest in the history of science, sent this to me before Yom Kippur. It is from the introduction to a book published in 1883 titled: Zoological sketches: a contribution to the outdoor study of natural history. The name of the author was Felix Leopold Oswald

"The tendencies of our realistic civilization make it evident that the study of natural science is destined to supersede the mystic scholasticism of the Middle Ages, and I believe that the standards of entertaining literature will undergo a corresponding change. The Spirit of Naturalism has awakened after its long slumber..."
"...Whatever is natural is wrong, was the keystonedogma of the mediaeval schoolmen...The worship of joy yielded to a worship of sorrow, the study of living nature to the study of dead languages and barrensophisms...The moralists that had suppressed the Olympic festivals compensated the public with autos-da-fe. The whole history of the Middle Ages is, indeed, the history of a long war against nature.
[Note that he doesn't blame religion or even Catholicism but the scholastics for everything wrong in Western thought! Safer in England and America to do that]
"But nature has at last prevailed. Delusions are clouds, and the storm of the Thirty Years' War has cleared our sky...Ghost-stories are going out of fashion...And, moreover, the progress of natural science tends to supersede fiction by making it superfluous-even for romantic purposes."

What I find interesting about this piece, besides for its total distortion of the Middle Ages, is its assumption that modern civilization would have no need for fantasy. As we know so well, stories about boy wizards do not sell over 300 million copies in our modern civilization. This does raise an interesting question though as to what is the relationship between the writing of fantasy fiction and belief in the supernatural? It would seem to be reasonable to classify fantasy as a genre for religious people and science fiction as a genre for secularists. Religious people, who put their hopes in a supernatural world, should find it very easy to suspend their disbelief when confronted with fantasy supernatural. Secularists, who place their hopes in science should be open to suspending their disbelief at the scientific fantasies of science fiction. Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia were written by Tolkien and Lewis, who were both deeply religious individuals. On the other hand science fiction was pioneered by the likes of H.G Wells, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, all quite hostile to organized religion. The only problem with this theory is that it does not pan out in reality. Orson Scott Card is one of the greatest science fiction writers today and he is a Mormon. Not only that but his science fiction has very explicit religious overtones. One of the greatest fantasy writers today, Philip Pullman, is militant atheist. His Dark Materials, besides for turning Paradise Lost on its head, is an atheist allegory written to open children up to the idea of overthrowing God and all those who claim to speak in his name. (Its a brilliant series of book, so please do not let any religious qualms you may have get in the way of reading it.) Furthermore, as we saw with Harry Potter, fantasy, even when it is not explicitly hostile to religion, can still raise its ire.
I happen to be a fan of both science fiction and fantasy. I believe that these forms of fiction have an important role to play in society in that they force us to think outside of the normal box of our reality. They tyranny of everyday expectations and of the society around us is one of the hardest things to fight against. It is only by being able to break outside of the box of what our own preconceptions of reality that we can truly become free thinkers.