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The other day I was reading quite a passionate argument about the portrayal of house elves in Harry Potter; why, I am not sure, since I bailed on the series some books back. It put me in mind, however, of several other discussions I've seen recently where writers have talked about what they are trying to achieve in terms of addressing this social problem or that. Anyway, I was struck by the difference between people who look to a text to provoke questions as opposed to those who look to the text for some sort of answer, a practical example of how to behave or think.
When I write, I am generally thinking 'what a fascinating question'; therefore, when I'm reading, I tend to see things as being questions. Apparently some people are more of the 'this is an important answer' school of thought. So, in the house elf discussion, I would be inclined to think, that's an interesting question that can be raised in a fantasy world: how should we treat intelligent creatures who want to serve us? More generally, how should we strike a balance between the treatment we think others should, morally speaking, want from us, and what they actually do want? Then I might go on from there to consider, say, the compassionate desire of the religious to save people from hellfire as opposed to the understandable determination of the unconverted to live according to their own lights. Or the obviously benevolent desire to spread equality and opportunity for personal fulfillment among all cultures, as against the natural tendency of people to see merit in and want to maintain their current value system and societal structure. Or the degree to which anyone can ever be justified in trying to save someone from themself. There are all sorts of areas to which the same basic question can be applied.
The answers school, on the other hand, is inclined to see things as modelling and commenting on aspects of the real world. They, therefore, read about house elves and see an example of how we should view other people who are in a certain relation to ourselves. From this perspective, the portrayal of house elves comes close to suggesting that people looking after us or providing us with goods are happy with their lot and we shouldn't upset them by trying to treat them better. This, they feel, is a dangerous thing to suggest, encouraging us to benefit from those less fortunate whilst putting from our minds the hardships from which we are profiting (a course in which most of us, sadly, need little encouragement).
This difference in approach leads adherents of the two schools not only to talk almost completely past each other in debate but also to form the most dismal impression of each other's morals. How, asks the one group, can you so easily overlook even the most glaring encouragements to injustice? How can you talk about a work while completely ignoring even the worst real world implications, the most pernicious exemplars? You repeatedly take works from which the most unpleasant lessons may be drawn, and dismiss as unimportant all our concerns about them. Obviously your own moral character must be appalling!
What little respect, says the other group, you must have for moral reasoning. We are trying to examine serious questions, and you keep interrupting with this pointless game whereby you pretend to mistake a work of fiction for a coded how-to book, points awarded to anyone who can decode an unpleasant real life message. How frivolously you ignore the substance of any conversation, however important the subject, to point out that yet again you have managed to force some sort of correspondence between the text and some real world view you deplore. What sort of person you must be, to see in the rich panoply of human thought nothing but simplistic (and generally nasty) didacticism!
Thus each side retires, convinced of its righteousness and deploring the general wickedness of other commentators.
When I write, I am generally thinking 'what a fascinating question'; therefore, when I'm reading, I tend to see things as being questions. Apparently some people are more of the 'this is an important answer' school of thought. So, in the house elf discussion, I would be inclined to think, that's an interesting question that can be raised in a fantasy world: how should we treat intelligent creatures who want to serve us? More generally, how should we strike a balance between the treatment we think others should, morally speaking, want from us, and what they actually do want? Then I might go on from there to consider, say, the compassionate desire of the religious to save people from hellfire as opposed to the understandable determination of the unconverted to live according to their own lights. Or the obviously benevolent desire to spread equality and opportunity for personal fulfillment among all cultures, as against the natural tendency of people to see merit in and want to maintain their current value system and societal structure. Or the degree to which anyone can ever be justified in trying to save someone from themself. There are all sorts of areas to which the same basic question can be applied.
The answers school, on the other hand, is inclined to see things as modelling and commenting on aspects of the real world. They, therefore, read about house elves and see an example of how we should view other people who are in a certain relation to ourselves. From this perspective, the portrayal of house elves comes close to suggesting that people looking after us or providing us with goods are happy with their lot and we shouldn't upset them by trying to treat them better. This, they feel, is a dangerous thing to suggest, encouraging us to benefit from those less fortunate whilst putting from our minds the hardships from which we are profiting (a course in which most of us, sadly, need little encouragement).
This difference in approach leads adherents of the two schools not only to talk almost completely past each other in debate but also to form the most dismal impression of each other's morals. How, asks the one group, can you so easily overlook even the most glaring encouragements to injustice? How can you talk about a work while completely ignoring even the worst real world implications, the most pernicious exemplars? You repeatedly take works from which the most unpleasant lessons may be drawn, and dismiss as unimportant all our concerns about them. Obviously your own moral character must be appalling!
What little respect, says the other group, you must have for moral reasoning. We are trying to examine serious questions, and you keep interrupting with this pointless game whereby you pretend to mistake a work of fiction for a coded how-to book, points awarded to anyone who can decode an unpleasant real life message. How frivolously you ignore the substance of any conversation, however important the subject, to point out that yet again you have managed to force some sort of correspondence between the text and some real world view you deplore. What sort of person you must be, to see in the rich panoply of human thought nothing but simplistic (and generally nasty) didacticism!
Thus each side retires, convinced of its righteousness and deploring the general wickedness of other commentators.
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