The Character of Life in Literature
January 2, 2000
Entertaining literature enthralls us with
suspense, humor and the intense action of an engaging plot. Superior literature
transcends mere action. It presents to the reader the authors insights into human
character and reveals the complex ways in which character and action interrelate to
generate chains of consequences and results. Still finer literature reveals the complex
interactions between action, individual character and the evolving character of the
society in which the action takes place. The greatest literature goes still further.
It reveals not only insights of individual and social character but of the character of
life itself.
Does life have a character of its own? When
we speak of character in an individual, we usually mean the fixed and recurring pattern of
traits that are associated with a person. Such and such
behavior is characteristic of that individual. We may even divide people into broad
categories or types, grouping them according to common tendencies such as ruthless
aggressiveness and ambition, constricting selfishness and stinginess, or expansive
cheerfulness, generosity and goodwill. Underlying the individual variations of human
character, we recognize some common tendencies and characteristics of the entire human
race that govern all human behavior. We refer to this common character as human nature.
Individuals vary not only in the type of
their character but also in the degree. Those whose lives are determined and directed by
the prevailing habits, fashions, beliefs, attitudes, opinions and values of the society in
which they live have at best a developed social as opposed to an individual character.
Their conduct is determined by the expectations of society. The act and live within its
norms, refusing to fall below the required social minimum, failing to rise above the
maximum expected of a normal member of the group. On one extreme are those that do not
even conform to the minimum standards, who fail to acquire the socially required
behaviors, attitudes and values. They are unformed individuals, lacking even a formed
social character. At the other extreme are those whose beliefs, attitudes and values are
determined internally by the strength of their own convictions. These are individuals with
developed minds and formed characters of their own.
Individuals do not live or act in a vacuum.
They exist and act in a human social environment of other people that constantly acts on
them and reacts to their actions. They also live in a natural environment of physical
objects and material forces such as the weather. And those familiar with occult and
spiritual traditions recognize that there is also a subtle environment of other planes of
existence, both higher planes of spiritual influence and lower planes of negative forces
in universal nature seeking to act on the lives and express through the character and
actions of human beings. All these levels or planes including the social, material and the
occult constitute the field of human activity. Each of them functions according to its own
laws or principles. Each of them has its own characteristic modes of action and influence
on human life.
When we speak of the character of life,
we refer to those subtle laws and principles that govern the interaction between
individuals and the world around them. This character reveals itself in many different
ways. It has been observed and codified in countless forms by earlier, less scientifically
minded civilizations, as auspicious signs, omens, symbols, superstitions, rules for
action, social conventions, vital intuitions, mental insights and spiritual wisdom. Most
of what remains of these earlier forms of knowledge is either unintelligible to our modern
understanding or so mixed with superstition that it is of little use for modern life, no
matter how valid or useful it was to societies in the past.
The modern mental individual seeks a set of
rational principles by which to understand phenomenon life, not a set of blind dictates
and inexplicable tenets. Fortunately, we have at our disposal three fields for direct
observation, rational analysis and insight into the character of lifefiction,
biography and personal experience. A study of all three reveals that life does indeed have
a character of its own which at once transcends and expresses through each particular time
and place, individual character and social circumstance. That character can be observed in
the smallest as well as the most momentous events of our own lives. It shines through most
strikingly in the literary works of Shakespeare,
Hugo, Dumas, Hardy, Austen and others of their kind.
What is this thing we so vaguely refer to as
life? In Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo describes life as a universal force that
expresses as the individual force maintaining each individual form or object in
manifestation. It is the force that creates and preserves the form, defends its survival
and energizes its growth. Although we view life in terms of many separate and individual
lives, it is only one single, universal existence that we perceive as many. In its origin,
life is the infinite, creative force that builds the worlds and inhabits them with forms
of its own self-conception and creation. It is the conscious force of Sat, the
Self-Conscious Being, the Pure Existence, the Divine Consciousness, the omnipresent
reality.
But here in the physical vital world we live
and act in, Life does not appear to us either as consciousness or as force. We do not
generally attribute conscious awareness or intention to life, even though we often find
occasions that seem to indicate a secret will or fate or determinism governing our lives.
We do not think of life as consciously or even unconsciously acting upon us in certain
ways or subconsciously responding to what we think, feel or do.
We do not generally think of life as a force
either. We are aware only of many individual forms and forces acting around and upon us
the actions of other individuals, the influence of public opinion, the restrictive
and protective action of social conventions, laws and social institutions, as well as the
action of the material forces of nature rain, wind, lightning, the hurricane or
earthquake or meteor from outer space. Each seems to us driven by its own inner
determinism or its own natural laws, but we do not normally perceive any master script or
director or set of rules or unifying principle governing the whole play of life.
An objective and in-depth study of life will
reveal that it does exhibit all the attributes of a universal force with a pronounced
character of its own. So vast is the scope and so great the complexity of lifes
character that it cannot be fully grasped by mental comprehension. Full knowledge of life
reveals itself only to spiritual vision. Nevertheless, we can identify many of the general
laws and principles by which it functions.
Science, religion, philosophy, and art all
strive in different ways to reveal the ultimate nature of reality. Science focuses
primarily and most successfully on physical facts in search for the laws and principles
governing the formation of material objects and material forces, though its researches
have now taken it to the borderline where the material opens out into more subtler domains
of reality. Religion in its most exalted forms of spirituality focuses on inner spiritual
experience to reveal that reality directly to the consciousness of the spiritual seeker.
In its more mundane forms, it provides a set of tenets to govern human behavior in a
manner that appears most conducive to social harmony and moral development. Philosophy
focuses on the construction of a rational mental framework for understanding reality. But
since minds linear mode of functioning rarely suffices to embrace the subtle and
many-sided complexity of life movements, philosophy normally fails by abstraction to
capture the object of its search.
That leaves art, of which literature is the
most important for present purposes. Literary fiction is an effort to capture the deeper
realities of life by focusing not only on material facts, moral principles and mental
ideas, but by portraying the chains of action and reaction among and between individuals,
society, the forces of nature and in some instances the subtle forces of other planes.
Thoughts, beliefs, opinions, attitudes, emotions, sentiments, impulses, desires,
aspirations, anxieties, fears and cravings expressed in action are the stuff of
literature. Literature focuses on the meeting point between inner subjective intention and
material and social results in the external world of living beings, between thought and
action, between cause and consequence, between human character and the character of life.
It is true that all these aspects of life are
much more directly known to us through our own personal experience, both internal and
external. But the mind and human ego finds it extremely difficult to bring an impersonal
objectivity and scientific disinterestedness to the study of ones own life.
Therefore, it is in literature that we can most readily and objectively discover the
nature of life. And based on the principles discovered and confirmed in the writings of
the greatest authors, extract principles that can then be applied and reconfirmed in our
own lives to achieve not only self-knowledge and knowledge of life, but mastery of self
and life as well.
In the papers on this web site, we examine the character of life
as portrayed and revealed by some of the greatest writers of all time.
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