The Influence of Literature on Society

This reading Literature and Ideology by James T. Farrell raises many question about literature, ideology, democracy, politics, relationship among them and with the society. It also raises questions about how literature was influenced by the state and created problems by giving examples of proletarian literature and the French writers’ criticized work. The writer proves his point by saying ‘literature cannot be handmaiden of politics and a docile servant of ideology’. This reading also explains how the literature helped shape the societies and influenced people and the states.

Farrell believes that meaningful literature always played vital role to highlight the real face of society, to put the problems in front of people and to cure the soul by giving enlightening the minds of people. Literature cannot be worked as ‘official’ to talk about the ideology of certain groups. Literature writers should always be free to think and to write. Literature is a collected body of written works that includes not only religious texts and bulky novels, but also plays, poetry and short stories, all of which reflect the authors perceptions of society and the human condition at the period in history when the works were written. As such, literature represents a living body of work that speaks to humans of all ages about concepts that are of importance to understanding the condition of humans in relationship to the ever shifting social mores of a given society at some point in that societies routine life.

This will of necessity change depending on various socioeconomic circumstances, and the morality of a given society. Myth by its very nature is a fundamental part of all literature, whether it be of myths unique to a particular people or culture, or a shared myth that all humankind tends to share, as in many ancient Greek mythologies, which often tells of man’s relationship to nature as well as to society in general. Many myths are found in one form or another throughout world culture. Some have termed this the “collective unconscious “, which refers to the many myths that exist among societies that have had no contact with each other. Some common themes include love, hate, wealth, power, sex, greed, life, death religion, and morality.

These concerns often form the highest themes of literature. Literature is a tool to help us explore our thoughts, behaviors, preconceived notions and in a larger way to find out for ourselves what it means to be human, in a way our predecessors didn’t have possible. In the past couple of decades, the literature on 1947 Partition have opened many doors to the people to look at the other side of the image. It broke plenty of understandings, myths and misconceptions about the mass migrations of people. In 1980’s and before the literature produced had a set narrative of the events of 1947 partition which was later quoted as ‘official’ or ‘state dictated’ narrative and a certain type of ideology was tried to impose on common people.

These writings helped create hate among India and Pakistan specially among the common people. At that time very few free thinkers tried to write about this specific event by giving the space to look at the other side of the image. All of these thinkers and writers had to face the wrath of state. But writers like Pippa Virdee, Urvushi Bhutalia, Ayesha Jalal, Ishtiaq Ahmed and many other writers wrote about the common people without the influence of state. This all literature produced in later years created a healthy and tolerant space for common people where they looked at this specific event in different shades. This is the literature’s influence Farrell are talking about the in his essay.

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