Firedog Lake ran this clip from "To Kill a Mockingbird" and invited readers to pick a favorite fictional father. Atticus Finch is a popular favorite in the general population, and deservedly so, but what struck me about the reaction on this particular site was the tepid response. A few commenters picked ineffectual dads from comedies, but most seemed uncomfortable with the very idea of fathers and changed the subject as quickly as they could.
I couldn't find the exact clip from Firedog Lake, which included Atticus shooting the mad dog, but here is a good one:
I've always had a soft spot for the dad in "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel."
Fictional fathers who are engaged with their children are surprisingly rare. King Arthur's father Uther Pendragon dies shortly after Arthur himself was born, so that the boy has to be raised in hiding. So too Finn MacCool's father, who had lead the Fianna.
ReplyDeleteAragorn's father Arathorn is a great man and a worthy one, but we never meet him. He is important because he structures the relationships and duties that inform Aragorn's life, but he doesn't appear on stage at all. This is exactly like Ecgtheow, Beowulf's father, whose relationship to Hrothgar and to Hygelac, his uncle the king. As a background figure he set the stage for Beowulf to be who he was and do what he did, but we never meet him.
Odysseus! Greatest father of all literature, he is the figure who structures Telemachus' life, and whose return brings at last peace and joy and justice to his family. But his influence on his son's development is chiefly by his absence, and his son's longing and questing for him. Only at the end do they come together.
Priam, father of Hector, he's an important exception. Hector himself, for that matter. But the Iliad is the best of poems in so many ways, it is not surprising to see it standing above other examples here also.
Louis L'amour has some good father figures -- not always actual fathers -- who are involved in their son's lives for the first part of the story. Generally this sets up a powerful second half in which the son avenges a father who was murdered.
ReplyDeleteBut the stories are still good, if only because they show the influence of the father on the education and moral upbringing of the boy, and how that boy thereby becomes a man.
I don't have heroes. It's just as hard for me to find a fictional father.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
I'm a father too. It is nice to get the seat at the end of the table, and be the go-to person for problem solving, but I don't feel like I somehow deserve accolades. I bumbled through a lot of fatherhood. I don't have a good explanation for what I mean to say, but John 3:30 is better than most.
ReplyDeleteI didn't need a fictional father, I had real one who, although old-fashioned and curmudgeonly in his thinking wrt what his little girl should and shouldn't do, was always available to help, show me how to fix or do something or just have a drink with.
ReplyDeleteAnd, having been raising with just such a father is it any wonder that MH is as such with the VES?
As I said, I don't need imaginary ones, I had a real one and so does my daughter.
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I don't have heroes.
ReplyDeleteThat's the saddest thing I've ever heard a man say. A man's father should be his first hero, but not his last.
That's the saddest thing I've ever heard a man say.
ReplyDeleteWe've had this discussion before. Nothing's changed, and I'm not at all sad about it. Nor is the young mother for whom I'm father.
Eric Hines
Nor is the young mother for whom I'm father.
ReplyDeleteWell, of course she's not. She has a hero: that one who used to bulldog trains from motorcycles, as he was just telling us a few days ago.
I don't recall the discussion. I do think, though, that I don't know how I'd have made it without the excellent men who have helped guide my life and set examples for me at various points along the way. Even now heroism is a guiding light for me, although from the other side. I do so much of what I do out of a desire to be worthy of being thought a hero by my wife, or by my son. I still have many and deep flaws, but I am constrained to a great degree by the wish to be worthy of what they want me to be.
The discussion centered on whether fictional characters could be heroes and the degree of truth in fiction.
ReplyDeleteOf course there are men and women who have attributes and who have done deeds that are worth emulating--the attributes and deeds, as well as the person as a kind of shorthand for those attributes and deeds. But it's those things that are worth emulating, not the person except as that shorthand.
And no, my daughter does not see me as a hero; my wife and I taught her better than that. Although she has recently come to God; I do claim some credit for that--by example, though, not by heroism; there are some things associated with me worth emulating. Just as there are associated with you.
Eric Hines
I am afraid I still do not recall the discussion, but it sounds like the old Cavalier/Roundhead debate. I'm not surprised to find myself having taken the Cavalier side.
ReplyDeleteIn a very old post on a heroic ethic that might span the Islamic as well as the Christian world, I referenced Alcuin's famous letter demanding, "What has Ingeld to do with Christ?" My answer was that we are what the one has to do with the other: we ourselves are the connection, for we are their children. Just as the child is the manifest expression of the union of husband and wife, we are the manifest expression of the old heroism and the Christian one.
So of course we ought to be Christians, and strive to be meek. But we ought also to honor our fathers, and strive to be like them. And they were heroes, the best of them: men who bestrode the world.
If we write them in literature, we honor them, and strive to make new their examples. Better still to make them real in our lives.
http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2014/06/15/human-equality/
ReplyDeleteI think you're on to something, Ymar. This sense of 'equality' is a Modern political concept, and one that I think to be essentially incoherent. Naturally, applying incoherent concepts to political affairs leads to bad results.
ReplyDeleteSo what you want is a society that embraces the fact that human beings aren't equals -- indeed, the concept of equality really doesn't apply very well to human beings -- and lets them sort accordingly (what you are calling 'social mobility'). That sounds like you're aiming for what you see as the best of both of the Japanese and American worlds.
"That sounds like you're aiming for what you see as the best of both of the Japanese and American worlds."
ReplyDeleteMore or less correct, since social mobility is the American belief in individual self determination/autonomy, and social status recognized on sight is the military top down side. The Japanese can tell who is superior or inferior, merely by checking the language both people use as well as body language. This is the same as saluting from rank alone in the military. Even the youths that ignore this or chafe at this, are taught it and must obey, or face the consequences.
LTC ret Kratman explains the bottom up benefits of authority here, excerpted from one of my previous blog entries.
http://www.baen.com/WarTraining-Part5.asp
The idea that equality is the highest virtue or priority, somehow now lets in a bunch of Mexican gang lords and human slave traffickers, forcing people to pay for their overlords' living and medical expenses. That's not equality, because equality doesn't exist except on an individual 1 to 1 level. But if people believe it is equality, they can be made to sacrifice for it, draining the life blood of the nation.
While a top down feudalistic aristocracy like Japan was and still is to a certain extent, isn't particularly progressive, they are at least stable. The problem with feudalism isn't its stability, it is very stable, it is that it doesn't maximize the manpower they have available.
This can be applied to human romantic and sexual relations, in the US. Normally the bond of love would make a woman respect and obey her lover, and if she felt threatened by such things as rape, she would go to him as her first source of help. But in modern American society, women are programmed to take rape cases to the college or police system. The system then separates the people involved, sometimes even the families involved in DV cases, and then adjudicates it. For colleges, this adjudication is Extra Judicial, much like death squads are. The justification is that because the power between a man and woman is UnEqual, the state must intervene to produce an Equal resolution. That's why certain states don't want women to arm themselves, because that would take the power away from the Top.
With an NCO and officer structure, with everyone knowing their place, not wishing to be demoted and wishing to work to be promoted, humans can resolve most things between themselves, without involving the captain or courtmartials.
There's little difference between a lover obeying the authority of "her man" and an NCO obeying the authority of their officer. The social structure is functionally the same. And if people don't think it is the same, they should watch the Japanese for about 10 years and see what they have done. It's like a civilian culture that functions like the US military, except it's not military in values at all.
I mentioned this before, but Japan's top down monolithism would be unworkable if they lacked their NCO, or unofficial civilian chain of command, to implement orders from the top.
ReplyDeleteThe Japanese government can get US supplies in an emergency and order it to be distributed, but if the people were like SOmalia, they would be gunning down women in the streets, hungry mothers, selling sex slaves for food, and all that jazz.
Instead the local criminal or yakuza organization is known for using their chain of command to distribute the supplies and civilians were organized on a ground bottom up level to distribute supplies, ensure fair distribution based upon need, and also maintained local security. While the ideal is often a fantasy and unrealistic, the fact that this happens at all is the power of social engineering and social applications.
Japan has the Sword and Gun Control Act/Law, which disarms everyone of any blades or guns, except in special cases (police, heirs of kenjutsu sword lines, operators of historical dojos, swordsmiths etc). Why then is crime, violent crime, not taking over entire neighborhoods? Because the police act as a counter insurgency force, by stationing themselves every few blocks, in their little police boxes, often with only one handgun and only 1 or 2 people (to rotate standing outside shifts). They "show the flag", knowing that any directed attack would overwhelm them. And the community sees this, and trusts in the Japanese police force, far more than Americans do in US SWAT forces. But primary neighborhood security is handled mostly by the civilians and families, in the form of intel and prevention. Because each family head has autonomous authority over their clan or family, they can exert actions without notifying the police. While this can produce some horror stories, it makes for a peaceful country that foreigners often called pacifistic or too unwary of dangers. Well, actually the Japanese call their own country too pacifistic and too unaware of dangers. Most people prefer to obey orders and ignore security, offloading it to others. As usual.
Over the last 10 or so years, I've noticed these disparate events and later categorized them based upon a unified theory of what they think they are doing.
Much of the Left's propaganda uses English words to control thought, to force through their interpretation of justice. It's relatively easy to bypass that kind of brainwashing just thoughts in a foreign language. I merely translate the words across, and the Japanese "filter" generally makes a lot of American stuff look crazy.