Load-Bearing Elements – Ideas

Hmm, my bias towards science fiction might be showing.

Isn't there a more literary term you could use for this like "theme."

Maybe, but that would limit our discourse, Hypothetical Reader.

I'll pretend you didn't say that and we'll just move on.

Cool!

So, when you say Ideas can be a load-bearing element, are you referring to philosophical novels?

You mean like Crime and Punishment, Notes From Underground, The Idiot, Demons, or The Brothers Karamazov?

Well, I mean, people besides Dostoevsky have written philosophical novels, but sure.

Yeah, but I went on a big Dostoevsky kick after I read Crime and Punishment as the summer reading for AP English. Also, the other example that most people would be familiar with is Ayn Rand, and I never had an Ayn Rand phase.

Lucky you!

I know, right? Anyway, you've probably guessed that we're going to start out by talking about Crime and Punishment! So, you've read C&P, right?

As far as my AP English teacher knows I did.

C'mon, we just used that joke two weeks ago. Anyway, what's C&P about?

All right, so there's this guy, Raskolnikov, who's having a rough go of things and he's been pawning his stuff to make ends meet and he decides to murder his pawn broker. He plots out the perfect crime but it all goes sideways when the pawn broker's sister interrupts the murder and he kills her, too. Then he has brain fever for a week and is Columbo'd into confessing and gets sentenced to hard labor in Siberia where his prostitute girlfriend follows him to save his soul. Also, his best friend marries his sister, saving her from marrying a manipulative, abusive asshole.

Amazing, every word of what you just said was wrong.

No, it wasn't. Also, is this the place for Last Jedi references?

Well, to be fair, that is a fairly accurate summary of the events of the novel. But the plot of the novel only exists to demonstrate that the philosophical outlook articulated (and put into action) by Raskolnikov is wrong. It's the type of novel where (between melodramatic episodes meant to keep serial readers interested between entries) characters will sit down and have conversations about philosophy. Raskolnikov propounds the philosophical ideas that were popular in Russian radical circles at the time (or at least Dostoevsky's view of them) such as Nihilism, Rational egoism, and Utilitarianism. Believing himself to be an extraordinary individual — he uses Napoleon as an example — Raskolnikov justifies the murder of Alyona Ivanovna as a necessary demonstration of his ability to bring about a net good for society by stepping beyond the bounds of conventional morality. Specifically by murdering someone who engages in usurious and exploitative lending practices.

I do recall AP English, you know.

Wait, have we established a backstory for you that involves taking an AP English class?

This is definitely not the time or place to quibble about the Hypothetical Reader character.

You're right. Anyway, the point is, Dostoevsky believed that these philosophical ideas were dangerous and used the form of the novel to present fictional scenarios in which they result in violence.

Isn't that just reactionary, slippery-slope bullshit?

Maybe? But that's sort of the point of exploring ideas in fiction. To see what sort of end point you can come to from a given starting point. Like say Frankenstein.

We already did Frankenstein.

Yeah, but you said that that you always want to talk about Frankenstein.

It's so good.

I know, right?  Anyway, Frankenstein and other works of Speculative Fict—

You can just say Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Fine, SSF books often take this a step further, using fantastical settings to explore social issues without the baggage of history and contemporary biases. I mean, obviously we could talk Frankenstein. But we could also look at something like The Martian Way.

I'm sorry.

It's a collection of short stories and novellas by Isaac Asimov. The whole point is to get the reader to examine their own biases as Earthlings. What might an alien think of a human being? Hell, what might a Martian colonist think of the other humans back on Earth? Not to say that the Earthling perspective is right or wrong, but it's important to understand that not everyone views the world the same way.

Like in The Left Hand of Darkness! The reason that Genly Ai has so much trouble is that he refuses to really engage with the Gethenian cultural context created by their ambisexuality. He thinks of them as men who sometimes become female for the purposes of reproduction. Because his insight is limited by his own Terran cultural context, he is unable to successful engage in diplomacy in Karhide or Orgoreyn.

And let's not forget the significance of his misunderstanding of shifgrethor.

It would be foolish to forget that. Should we explain what shifgrethor is for the benefit of people who haven't read The Left Hand of Darkness?

Naw, let 'em squirm. Or you know, read a new book. Maybe it might give them Ideas.

You're the worst, Lucas.