In January, I rang in the new year the same way I ring in most years, months, weeks or days: I started reading a new book. It was one I had picked up on a whim and thrown into my backpack to prepare for one of my many long nights working the front desk at my university’s gym.
I would spend most shifts with a deck of cards, spending hour after hour becoming impressively good at solitaire, looking away from the columns of cards only to occasionally swipe the ID cards of entering patrons. When a deck was particularly difficult to solve, I’d give myself a break and focus instead on the worlds in my books.
That January night, the world I chose to delve into was that of Margaret Atwood’s 2003 novel “Oryx and Crake,” a fictional story that has since become all too real.
I don’t want to provide too many spoilers, as it is a book I would recommend any and everybody read, but the novel takes the reader to a post-apocalyptic beach with the main character, Snowman. The apocalypse, as the reader unravels throughout the entire book, is brought on by a deadly virus that ends up killing off nearly the entire human species.
Some of the novel’s main themes include greed and love, as well as the dangers of both.
In the book, someone with too much power and too much greed acts on it and the results are deadly. Not only for himself, but for all of humankind and the world.
When I look at the world in which we live today, I can’t help but draw parallel after parallel. Of course, we don’t live in a world full of angry pigoons (intelligent, lab-created pigs with human organs to provide the wealthy with a never-ending supply of transplant organs) or adorable, friendly rakunks (part racoon, park skunk, all cute). We aren’t all suddenly dropping dead by the millions as happens in the novel, but we do live in a world full of power, greed and now, even a pandemic.
Part of why I love reading is because it can tell us so much about ourselves and our world, even if what we’re reading is labeled fiction.
When you mix power and greed, you get corruption. That is true in Atwood’s novel and it is true for us today. When you mix corruption with a deadly pandemic, you end up with hundreds of thousands dead.
Books are a mirror into our own reality.
Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel “The Help” highlights the importance of amplifying Black voices.
Though “The Help” takes place in our own real world, the story itself is fiction. The racism and silencing of oppressed people, however, is not.
When the white women in the novel start to read the stories of their Black maids and nannies, chaos ensues. Their own prejudices are being realized and some fight to find out where the stories came from while others push to keep it a secret.
Every time I reread that book I find myself remembering a quote that I grew to love during my time in Germany: Das Chaos sei wilkommen, denn die Ordnung hat versagt.
Chaos is welcome, because order has failed.
Books, it appears, are a mirror into our own surroundings.
Sometimes those surroundings are chaotic, sometimes they’re scary or uncertain. Other times, we feel surrounded only by love or happiness.
Atwood and Stockett know that, and so do the millions of other authors who spend their lives working on these little windows into reality.
Literature reflects the culture from which it came.
The French satire Candide touts the dangers of strictly optimistic thinking, reflecting the philosophical preachings at the time that the world was in perfect balance and order.
New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s “She Said” walks readers through uncovering the Harvey Weinstein Scandal, reflecting the strides being made by women throughout America and the world.
The next time you pick up a book, think about what it says about your life, your surroundings. Is it a telling tale of racism and greed?
What kind of novel do you want to reflect today’s America and what can you do to get us there?
— Shannon Rabotski is a
reporter with the Times. She can be reached at
srbotski@themonroetimes.com
