Were All the Great Writers Liberals?

No, they weren't all liberals. Many of the great writers were quite conservative, in fact.

Writers usually express political and philosophical leanings. Shakespeare is the only exception I have found. Somehow, he maintained philosophical integrity but resisted the temptation to take a side in politics. Instead, he lambasted all forms of "ambition" for leadership, whether liberal, conservative, or any other. In Shakespeare's mind, it seems, any desire to assume a leadership role is the seed of corruption. I can find no exceptions to this rule in his work.

Most other writers intentionally create situations designed to reinforce their political, as well as their philosophical views. Dickens, who ranks as England's second or third most renowned author, was an outspoken liberal, famous for demonizing the corruption of wealth. A 20th Century American author, Steinbeck, did pretty much the same during the Great Depression, when capitalism became a scapegoat for all the nation's woes. Harper Lee eviscerated the racial prejudices of a highly conservative Southern town.

Authors "stack the deck," of course. They create situations in which all the worst caricatures of their targeted villains blossom. To Lee's credit, she at least admits being one of the many villains who took a long time to grow out of her ignorance.

Two examples of superb conservative authors are William Golding and John Knowles.

In Lord of the Flies, Golding exposes human frailties and makes a case for the importance of rules in preventing chaos:

When a planeload of schoolboys (most of them prepubescent) crash-lands on an island, all adults perish, and a large number of the students survive. Thus begins a profoundly interesting experiment and a probing inquiry into human nature. The liberals among them intend to establish a utopian society and have "fun" until the day they're rescued. Ralph demonstrates natural leadership qualities and immediately becomes the "Chief." But he carries all the weaknesses of an overconfident liberal. The supreme idealist among them, he is much too generous with his trust and fails to confront the ominous signs of rage growing in his "Chief" adversary, Jack. Pulling blinders over his own eyes at the height of his power, he wastes several opportunities while Piggy, who suffers from near literal blindness himself but clearly perceives the danger, attempts to alert him and set him on the path to asserting power. As liberals often do, Ralph realizes much too late that Piggy was his "one true friend." The liberals neglect their duty to establish and enforce order, and a primitive, brutal, tribal menace, "fear itself," murders the one boy among them who is courageous enough to face the truth, plunging all of them into a spiral of self-destruction.

Knowles' A Separate Peace is about schoolboys too; they're a bit older. It takes place at an aristocratic prep school during World War II:

A friendship goes stale after an "accident" in a tree. Eventually, a new friendship grows between them. This one is more fragile, and although they set facts relating to the "incident" aside for a time, they build their new friendship on a genuine trust, which both boys endeavor to nurture very carefully. Just when it appears that they will be all right, their "do-gooder liberal" friends, who can't help delving into the mystery of what really happened in the tree, blow it all to pieces. They lay waste to a delicate love. Yes, the story is complicated by overtones of homophobia. No, Gene and Finny are not gay. One of the two friends, the liberal, perceives the cause of the accident to be merely a "blind impulse." The conservative holds himself to a higher standard and probes more deeply into it. He defines it as "ignorance in the human heart."

In both of these literary masterpieces, fear is not something to be slighted. "There's nothing to fear but fear itself," said FDR, the liberal President. But fear, ladies and gentlemen, fear is not nothing. Fear is irrational and impulsive. "Fear itself," as any good conservative will tell you, must be faced up to and must be dealt with.

I always tried to balance the teaching of conservative and liberal writers during the course of a school year. I'd teach To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies, one in the fall and the other in the spring. I'd also make a point to inform my students of their liberal or conservative bias, and I'd prove it by locating passages in those books that clearly identified the authors' sympathies and philosophical perspectives.

If you need more, you can look up my study guides on those books at TeachersPayTeachers.com. (Just click the link to my store.) You can get a lot of information by reading the preview downloads, which cost nothing.

Another resource you should check out is my new graphic organizer, which attempts to categorize some of the great authors with regard to their political tendencies as well as their degree of optimism and pessimism about the world. That item is designed to address this very question. In fact, the question is in the title. Once again, the free preview offers a large share of the substance of it:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Were-the-Great-Authors-All-Liberals-A-Graphic-Organizer-Tells-the-Story-7-Pages