Why teach and study English?
A few years ago the declining popularity of English majors was a noticeable trend, observed by The New Yorker and The New Republic.Who knew (except, apparently, the court-jester Simpsons), that a few years later the US President would be unknowingly echoing sci-fi satirist Orwell in half his speeches, brashly labeling mainstream media ‘the enemy of the people’ and ‘alternative facts’ the new truth? Yet today’s new world drives home a quick and harsh reminder that the art, craft, and indeed, political power of story-telling is more than just navel-gazing for nerds or boob tube jokes.
Stories are modern myths, the representation of a society.
Mythologist Joseph Campbell defined ‘myth’ as “the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour forth into human cultural manifestation.” Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst who influenced Campbell’s work and worked closely with Freud, said the archetypal foundations of the unconscious on which myths are based are so important for a culture that, "in reality we can never legitimately cut loose from them unless we are prepared to pay the price of a neurosis, any more than we can rid ourselves of our body and its organs without committing suicide." In other words, our stories reflect ourselves. If we have lost interest in understanding our stories – the role of the English major -, we reflect a loss of interest in understanding ourselves.
A crisis of self occurs when an individual’s life is dictated by outside forces to an extent that the individual loses all sense of personal power and voice.
But that is what an education that doesn’t do things like ask hard questions of literature, and a social lifestyle of following the herd – literally, on Twitter and Instagram - instead of interactive creation, like writing and reading, and questioning what you’ve been told, creates. And ironically, this crisis of self occurs in the readily bemoaned ‘me, me, me’ culture.
But we already know this.
The important reminder, here, is that story and its message from the subconscious, the study of which an English major takes on, is the fundamental fulcrum from which the psychology of a society swings. It’s can be what makes or breaks a movement. Your personal story and your cultural story will dictate your life path unless you consciously make what choices are available to you to retell and live it your way. In fact red versus blue, state borders, and terrorism are all stories, too: if we look at the timeline and direction of today’s popular stories, a mirroring trend beyond the decline in interest in studying them emerges.
From a magical alternative reality with Harry Potter to the ongoing dystopian young adult literature boom to the Marvel franchise, our culture’s top myths are about heroic escape from individual powerlessness and societal doom. In recent years, after Harry Potter, an ever-darker series, came the Twilight blockbusters about a human girl stuck in a love triangle between a vampire and a werewolf. Eventually she chose to go where the true power lay and join the sexy, untouchable power elite who drain ordinary humans of their lifeblood. On the heels of the vampire craze lurched the top-viewed zombie and hero survival shows, the apocalyptic Walking Dead and the anarchic Game of Thrones. The dystopian Hunger Games franchise unfolded simultaneously, where a powerless girl in a faux-positive system of alternative facts and oppression found her identity and changed the system from the inside by toppling its propaganda machine and mobilizing the downtrodden. And just a quick Google search of 2016 blockbusters yields movies theming on political unrest, takeover, and more dystopia: ‘Captain America: Civil War,’ ‘Independence Day: Resurgence,’ ‘X-Men: Apocalypse,’ alongside Marvel’s latest hero, ‘Doctor Strange,’ a dethroned surgeon looking to the east for multi-dimensional alternatives for personal healing and defining success.
Campbell wrote a book called “The Hero’s Journey.” Hollywood scriptwriters follow the universal story structure Campbell identified like a blueprint, because The Hero’s Journey is how we see ourselves, and how we order our lives. This is why Hollywood is more than good-looking people punching things in front of green screens and Oscar ceremonies more important than mere temporary distraction from the latest White House Tweet deriding Meryl Streep or Saturday Night Live in kindergarten bully language. People complain when celebrities have a political opinion but they, and the stories they represent, as we have just seen, are the figures that reflect and continually create our realities.
The power of Story - the common template of religion, government and economics - lies in its ability to provide a sense of structure and direction in a world otherwise without order. We study and teach English - read books and write creatively - to learn about ourselves and others. We are mobilized knowingly or unknowingly by Story.
How can one not react with some sense of pride and merit to poet Dylan Thomas’s words, “Do not go quietly into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light…”
Today’s teachers, actors, journalists, and yes, English majors are our future in a time more crucial than ever, because they are the ones most actively teaching, learning, writing, and telling these stories. And now, with shared technology, shifting borders and boundaries, and the brand of self, we are in a position more uniquely empowered than ever, to co-create our own Stories and define our own meanings.
As the quintessential writer Faulkner said once, in an interview: “I’d like to make a movie of George Orwell’s 1984. I have an idea for an ending which would prove the thesis I’m always hammering at: that man is indestructible because of his simple will to freedom.”
Heidi Hough teaches high school English in Vermont and is in a Masters program in Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. She is completing her first book, a memoir about her childhood raised in an extremist cult. For more on religion, politics and healing, follow Heidi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/heidstar