violence in literature essay

Violence in Literature: An Evolutionary Perspective

• November 2013
• In book: Evolution of Violence (pp.33-52)
• Publisher: Springer
• Editors: Todd K. Shackelford and Ranald D. Hansen

• University of Missouri - St. Louis

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Violence in Literature: An Evolutionary Perspective

Evolution of Violence, edited by Todd K. Shackelford and Ranald D. Hansen (New York: Springer, 2013) 33-52.

People read literature because they want to understand their own experience and the experience of others. Literature contains much violence because violence reveals the underlying conflicts in all social relationships. Evolutionary psychology offers the best explanatory framework for understanding social conflicts, but evolutionary psychology is still in the process of formulating theories about the way core motives interact with specific cultural constructs. To explain the significance of violence in particular works of literature, critics must analyze the interactions between human life history, specific cultural values, individual differences in authorial vision, and relations between the minds of authors and readers in response to characters. This chapter offers examples of that kind of analysis for three works of literature: Grimms’ “Little Red Riding Hood,” Angela Carter’s “The Werewolf,” and Shakespeare’s King Lear. The analysis of “Little Red Riding Hood” identifies fear of predation and fear of strangers as core concerns in the story and examines the way symbolic images affect the emotions of child readers. The analysis of “The Werewolf” contrasts the author’s relations with characters and audience in that story with the authors’ relations with characters and audience in the other two works. The analysis of King Lear contrasts the emotional effects of tragedy with the emotional effects of action movies, identifies normative human universals as the basis for audience response, examines the way characters in the play and critics of the play seek meaning through religious ideas, contrasts religious ideas with Shakespeare’s naturalistic world view, and argues that intuitive insights into human life history form the moral core of the play.

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Violence in Literature: An Evolutionary Perspective

• First Online: 01 January 2013

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• Joseph Carroll 3  

Part of the book series: Evolutionary Psychology ((EVOLPSYCH))

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People read literature because they want to understand their own experience and the experience of others. Literature contains much violence because violence reveals the underlying conflicts in all social relationships. Evolutionary psychology offers the best explanatory framework for understanding social conflicts, but evolutionary psychology is still in the process of formulating theories about the way core motives interact with specific cultural constructs . To explain the significance of violence in particular works of literature, critics must analyze the interactions between human life history, specific cultural values, individual differences in authorial vision, and relations between the minds of authors and readers in response to characters. This chapter offers examples of that kind of analysis for three works of literature: Grimms’ “Little Red Riding Hood,” Angela Carter’s “The Werewolf,” and Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” The analysis of “Little Red Riding Hood” identifies fear of predation and fear of strangers as core concerns in the story and examines the way symbolic images affect the emotions of child readers. The analysis of “The Werewolf” contrasts the author’s relations with characters and audience in that story with the authors’ relations with characters and audience in the other two works. The analysis of King Lear contrasts the emotional effects of tragedy with the emotional effects of action movies, identifies normative human universals as the basis for audience response, examines the way characters in the play and critics of the play seek meaning through religious ideas, contrasts religious ideas with Shakespeare’s naturalistic worldview, and argues that intuitive insights into human life history form the moral core of the play.

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Carroll, J. (2014). Violence in Literature: An Evolutionary Perspective. In: Shackelford, T., Hansen, R. (eds) The Evolution of Violence. Evolutionary Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9314-3_3

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Nine of the Most Violent Works of Literary Fiction

Blood, guts and darkness, not just for horror fans.

Most works of literary fiction aren’t heavy on the violence. After all, where’s the time, with all that wordplay and character development filling up space? I’m joking (sort of), but I think it’s fair to say that considering our generic conventions, extremely violent novels are much more likely to be horror, or crime, or even suspense—at least, these are the books that tend to have the plot lines and the fandoms to support an excess of bloodshed. But there are a few disturbingly violent books that  do  generally get categorized as literary fiction—which means that despite all the gory stuff, they’ve also cleared whatever nebulous generic bar that entails. Below, nine of the most violent books that are also widely celebrated as literary works of fiction.

You could put several McCarthy novels on this list, but I think Blood Meridian is the best and certainly among the most brutal. We are informed, on the book’s very first page, when we have our first glimpse of our protagonist (only a child) that “in him broods already a taste for mindless violence.” The violence to come in this book is indeed mindless (for most), and constant and intense. The kid is violent, and so is the gang he joins, whose members are ostensibly collecting the scalps of Apaches, but are really happy to murder anyone and everyone they encounter, and so, of course, is the terrifying and hairless Judge Holden, the only character whose love for bloodshed is intensified by philosophical surety. “War is at last a forcing of the unity of existence,” he says. “War is god.” Fun fact: it took Harold Bloom three tries to get into this novel, so appalled was he at the violence—but once he’d weathered it, he rated it “the greatest single book since Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying .”

Like McCarthy, there’s a lot of violence in Murakami’s oeuvre—but having read three of his novels, it is the violence in this one that I remember most viscerally, despite the fact that it is most imagined. Not imagined: fantasized. I mean, this is a book about a man who finds himself strangely, irresistibly tempted to stab his own new baby daughter with an ice pick. To make sure he doesn’t, he hires a prostitute and plans to use the ice pick on her—and also, after reading an article about it, sever her Achilles tendons. I mean, do you know what it sounds like when someone has their Achilles tendons sliced in two? I now do, forever, after reading this novel.

Another case of fantasized violence (well, maybe—the novel is rather less clear about this than the film, but the popularity of the film has now passed the fact that it’s all in Bateman’s head into canon), but intensely detailed. First it’s just run-of-the-mill murder from a run-of-the-mill disaffected yuppie, but as the book goes on, it gets more and more horrible, with Bateman pretty much trying everything you might try with a human body, dead or alive. Yes, that . That too. The scene of Bateman eating the body of a dead girl, trying to cook with her flesh but finding it too hard because he really can’t cook and so instead smearing it all over the walls, and admitting that “though it does sporadically penetrate how unacceptable some of what I’m doing actually is, I just remind myself that this thing, this girl, this meat, is nothing, is shit, and along with a Xanax (which I am now taking half-hourly) this thought momentarily calms me and then I’m humming, humming the theme to a show I watched often as a child— The Jetsons ? The Banana Splits ? Scooby Doo ? Sigmund and the Sea Monsters ?” Ugh.

Five words: The Part About the Crimes. Okay, a few more: the Part About the Crimes is the gruesome heart of 2666 , the outpouring of blood without which none of the rest would exist. It recounts the individual murders of 112 women in Santa Teresa over the course of only a few years. It is fairly difficult to get through, which, I suppose, is part of the point.

Violence isn’t typically this Murakami’s style—he’s more a magical ears and talking cats kind of guy, but if you’ve read this novel, you know exactly what I’m talking about: a single scene in an otherwise nonviolent novel that is so viscerally upsetting that anyone who reads it is unlikely to forget. It begins like this: “His men held Yamamoto down with their hands and knees while he began skinning Yamamoto with the utmost care. It truly was like skinning a peach.”

This novel is famous for its opening line: “When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs. Nugent.” The book gets more and more violent—first in the usual ways of hardscrabble life, with an abusive father, with neighborhood fights, with a job at the slaughterhouse, but then in less usual ways. Nothing, of course, compares to the moment when you find out exactly what he done.

Here’s another psychotic youth for a narrator, this one a multiple murderer before the age of ten, who at the time of the telling is sixteen and living on a Scottish island with his father, maintaining an elaborate clock face that deals out ritual deaths to wasps. Wasps being only the smallest creatures he likes to kill, of course. Even more gruesome than that is what has happened to Frank when he was small—the story he is told is that a dog chewed off his genitals, but that may not be the whole truth. No, indeed.

Like  American Psycho , the literary reputation of  A Clockwork Orange  has been indelibly affected by its popular film adaptation—though Burgess famously hated Kubrick’s version for what its glorification of violence. “I realized,” he said once, “how little impact even a shocking book can make in comparison with a film. Kubrick’s achievement swallowed mine, whole, and yet I was responsible for what some called its malign influence on the young.” Which makes sense, except for the fact that the book is actually somewhat  more  violent than the film, starting with the part where Alex intoxicates and rapes two ten-year-old girls. Indeed, the “old ultraviolence” is less visceral on the page than on the screen, especially when it’s all filtered through Nadsat, which gives it an imaginary feel, but still.

Maybe it’s not fair to include a play here (not least because I said “literary fiction,” but Shakespeare always gets a pass), even one that has, in some productions, made audience members faint , because the original Shakespeare isn’t exactly graphic—or at least not in the way of some of the novels above. But  Titus Andronicus  does feature tons of decapitations, deaths, and mutilations of various kinds, including what I’d rate as the most upsetting scene in all of Shakespeare—despite the fact that it happens off-stage—in which two of Tamora’s sons kill Lavinia’s fiancé, and then drag her off into the woods to rape and mutilate her, cutting off her hands and tying sticks to the stumps. All you get from the text is the set up, and then: “Enter DEMETRIUS and CHIRON with LAVINIA, ravished; her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out.” The two men proceed to mock her before her uncle finds and rescues her. Oh, but later her father kills her because that’s what you do with daughters who have been raped. There’s also the part where Titus kills Tamora’s sons, has them baked into pies, and then feeds them to her. . . you take my point.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Antigone — The Theme of Violence and Its Role in The Odyssey and Antigone

The Theme of Violence and Its Role in The Odyssey and Antigone

• Categories: Antigone The Odyssey

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Words: 1283 |

Published: Jun 29, 2018

Words: 1283 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Table of contents

Prompt examples for "the odyssey" essay, "the odyssey" essay example.

• Violence as a Catalyst for Conflict: Analyze how acts of violence serve as catalysts for conflict and tension in both "The Odyssey" and "Antigone," and discuss the consequences of these conflicts on the characters and plot.
• Moral and Ethical Implications of Violence: Discuss the moral and ethical implications of violence in the two works, considering how characters grapple with questions of justice, vengeance, and the consequences of their actions.
• The Use of Violence as a Narrative Device: Examine how violence is employed as a narrative device in "The Odyssey" and "Antigone," exploring how it shapes the storytelling, builds tension, and engages the audience.
• Violence as a Reflection of Societal Norms: Analyze how the portrayal of violence in both texts reflects the societal norms and values of the respective cultures in which they are set, and consider how these norms influence character behavior.
• Resolution and Redemption Through Violence: Discuss instances in which violence leads to resolution or redemption in the two works, exploring how it contributes to the ultimate outcomes and character arcs in the narratives.

Navigating the Depths of Violence in Homer's "The Odyssey"

Unmasking the theme of violence in sophocles' "antigone".

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Macbeth and Violence — Example A Grade Essay

Here’s an essay on Macbeth’s violent nature that I wrote as a mock exam practice with students. Feel free to read and analyse it, use the quotes and context for your own essays too!

It’s also useful for anyone studying Macbeth in general, especially with the following exam boards: CAIE / Cambridge, Edexcel, OCR, CCEA, WJEC / Eduqas.

Thanks for reading! If you find this resource useful, you can take a look at our full online Macbeth course here . Use the code “SHAKESPEARE” to receive a 50% discount!

This course includes: 

• A full set of video lessons on each key element of the text: summary, themes, setting, characters, context, attitudes, analysis of key quotes, essay questions, essay examples
• Downloadable documents for each video lesson 
• A range of example B-A* / L7-L9 grade essays, both at GCSE (ages 14-16) and A-Level (age 16+) with teacher comments and mark scheme feedback
• A bonus Macbeth workbook designed to guide you through each scene of the play!

For more help with Macbeth and Tragedy, read our article here .

THE QUESTION

Starting with this speech, explore how far shakespeare presents macbeth as a violent character. (act 1 scene 2).

Debate: How far is Macbeth violent? (AGREE / DISAGREE)

Themes: Violence (break into different types of violence)

Focus: Character of Macbeth (what he says/does, other character’s actions towards him and speech about him)

PLAN — 6–8 mins

Thesis – Shakespeare uses Macbeth to make us question the nature of violence and whether any kind of violent behaviour is ever appropriate

Point 1 : Macbeth has an enjoyment of violence

‘Brandished steel’ ‘smoked with bloody execution’

‘Unseam’d him from the nave to’th’chops’ ‘fixed his head upon the battlements’

Context — Thou shalt not kill / Tragic hero

Point 2 : Macbeth is a violent character from the offset, but this violence is acceptable at first

‘Disdaining Fortune’ ‘valiant cousin/ worthy gentleman’

‘Worthy to be a rebel’

Context: Divine Right of Kings / James I legacy

Point 3:  The witches and Lady Macbeth manipulate that violent power

‘Fair is foul and foul is fair’ ‘so foul and fair a day I have not seen’

‘Will these hands never be clean?’ ‘incarnadine’

‘Is this a dagger I see before me?’

Context: Psychological power — Machiavelli / Demonology

(Point 4) Ultimately, Macbeth is undone by violence in the end

Hubris — ‘Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripp’d’

‘Traitor’ ‘Tyrant’

‘Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’

Context: Violence for evil means is unsustainable, political unrest equally is negative and unsustainable — support James

Macbeth is certainly portrayed as a violent character from the offset, but initially this seems a positive trait: the Captain, Ross and others herald him as a great warrior, both an ally and valuable asset to Duncan and his kingdom. Furthermore, Duncan himself is overjoyed at Macbeth’s skill in battle. Yet, as the play progresses and Macbeth embarks upon his tragic fall, Shakespeare encourages us to question the nature of violence itself, and whether any kind of violence is truly good. Ultimately, Shakespeare demonstrates that Macbeth’s enjoyment of violence works against him, as it is manipulated by the evil forces at work in the play, and it ends in destroying not only himself but his entire life’s work, reputation and legacy.

Firstly, Macbeth is established as a character who embraces violence, though he uses it as a force for good in the sense that he defends Duncan and his Kingdom against traitors and the King of Norway’s attack. In the play, it is interesting to note that Macbeth’s reputation precedes him — despite being the central focus of the tragedy, we do not meet him until Act 1 Scene 3, and so this extract occurs before we have seen the man himself. The Captain’s speech begins with the dramatic utterance ‘Doubtful it stood’, creating a sense of tension and uncertainty as he recounts the events of the battle to Duncan and the others. Yet, the tone of the speech becomes increasingly full of praise and confidence as he explains how Macbeth and Banquo overcame ‘Fortune’, the luck that went against them, and their strong willpower enabled them to defeat ‘the merciless Macdonwald’, the alliteration serving to underscore the Captain’s dislike of the man, while the adjective ‘merciless’ implies that the traitor himself was also cruel and violent. The sense that Macbeth enjoys the violence he enacts upon the traitor is conveyed through visual imagery, which is graphic and quite repellent: ‘his brandish’d steel… smoked with bloody execution’ and ‘he unseam’d [Macdonwald] from the nave to th’chops’. The dynamic verb ‘smoked’ suggests the intense action of the scene and the amount of fresh blood that had stained Macbeth’s sword. Furthermore, the verb ‘unseam’d’ suggests the skill with which Macbeth is able to kill — he does not simply stab the traitor, he delicately and expertly destroys him, almost as if he’s a butcher who takes pleasure in his profession, and indeed at the end of the play Macduff does call him by this same term: ‘the dead butcher and his fiend-like queen’. Interestingly, much of the violence that occurs in the play happens offstage, Duncan is murdered in between Acts 2.1 and 2.2., as are Banquo and Macduff’s family. Even in this early scene, the audience hear about the violence rather than experiencing it directly. This suggests perhaps that for a Jacobean audience at a time of political instability, Shakespeare wanted to discourage the idea or enjoyment of violence whilst still exploring the idea of it in human nature and psychology. Furthermore, a contemporary audience would be aware of the Biblical commandment ‘thou shall not kill’, which expressed that violence and murder of any kind was a sinful act against God. Therefore, we can see that Macbeth is established as a tragic hero from the offset, though he is a successful character and increasing his power within the feudal world, this power is built upon his capacity for and enjoyment of violence, which will ultimately cause him to fail and in turn warn the Jacobean audience against any kind of violence in their own lives.

We could also interpret Macbeth as inherently violent, but under control of his own power at the beginning of the play, an aspect of himself which degenerates under the influence of evil. Though he is physically great, he is easily manipulated by the witches and Lady Macbeth, all of whom are arguably psychologically stronger. The use of chiasmus in the opening scene — ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’ is echoed by Macbeth’s first line in Act One Scene 3: ‘so foul and fair a day I have not seen’. Delving deeper into the meaning of these lines also reveals more about Shakespeare’s opinions on the inherent nature of violence; though the language is equivocal and can be interpreted in many ways, we can assume that the witches are implying that the world has become inverted, that ugliness and evil are now ‘fair’, what is seen as right or normal in Macbeth’s violent world. Macbeth uses similar lines, but with a different meaning, he is stating that he has never seen a day so ‘foul’, so full of gore and death, that was at the same time so ‘fair’, so good in terms of outcome, and positive for the future. Shakespeare is perhaps exposing an inherent paradox in violence here, that war and murder is thought by many to be noble if it leads to a positive political outcome. Furthermore, Lady Macbeth encourages and appeals to Macbeth’s sense for violence by directly associating it with masculinity and male traits that were considered noble or desirable in the Jacobean era. She questions him just prior to Duncan’s death, stating ‘I fear thy nature is too full o’th’milk of human kindness / to catch the nearest way’, using ‘milk’ as a symbol of femininity to imply his womanly and cowardly nature, while in turn asking evil spirits to ‘unsex’ her and fill her with ‘direst cruelty’. In this sense, it could be argued that Shakespeare is commenting on the connections between nature and violence, perhaps a Jacobean audience would have understood that Macbeth fighting for the king was an acceptable outlet for his violence, whereas Macbeth using violence for personal gain and Lady Macbeth’s wish to become more masculine, and therefore more violent, are all against the perceived view of natural gender and social roles of the time. Overall, we could say that the culture itself, which encourages Machievellian disruption and political vying for power through both women and men stepping out of the social norms of their society, encourages more violence and evil to enter the world.

Alternatively, it could be argued that Shakespeare uses Macbeth’s success through violence to criticise the nature of the Early Modern world, and so it is not Macbeth’s violence itself which is at fault, but the world which embraces and encourages this in him. Duncan responds to the Captain’s speech by exclaiming ‘valiant cousin’ ‘worthy gentleman!’, demonstrating his extreme faith in Macbeth’s powers. The Captain additionally terms him ‘Brave Macbeth’, stating ‘well he deserves that name’, suggesting that the general structure of the world supports violent and potentially unstable characters such as Macbeth, enabling them to rise to power beyond their means. Interestingly the downfall of Macbeth is foreshadowed early on in this extract, as the term ‘worthy’ is also applied to the traitor in the Captain’s speech, when he states Macdonwald is ‘worthy to be a rebel’, the repetition of this adjective perhaps subtly compares Macdonwald’s position to Macbeth’s own, as Macbeth’s own death also is similar to the initial traitors, with his own head being ‘fixed…upon the battlements’ of Inverness castle. Through this repetition of staging and terminology, we realise that the world is perhaps at fault more than Macbeth himself, as it encourages a cycle of violence and political instability. Though there is a sense of positivity in extract as Duncan has succeeded in securing the throne and defeating the traitor, the violent context in which this action occurs, being set in 11th century feudal Scotland, suggests the underlying political unrest that mirrors the political instability of Shakespeare’s own time. The play was first performed in 1606, three years after James I had been made King of England (though he was already King of Scotland at this time), and in 1605 there had been a violent attempt on his life with the Gunpowder Plot from a group of secret Catholics who felt they were being underrepresented. Shakespeare’s own family were known associates of some of the perpetrators, so it is likely that he intended to clear suspicion of his own name by creating a play that strongly supported James I’s Divine Right to rule. In this sense, we can see that the concept of a cycle of violence that is created through political instability is integral to Shakespeare’s overall purpose, he is strongly conveying to the audience that not only is Macbeth’s personal violence sinful, but the way in which society encourages people to become violent is terrible and must be stopped, for the good of everyone.

In summary, Macbeth is established from the offset as a violent character, who takes pride and pleasure in fighting and killing. However, Shakespeare is careful not to make this violent action central to the enjoyment of the play (until the very end, when Macbeth himself is defeated), to force us to engage with the psychology of violence more than the physical nature of it. Though the women in the play are passive, Lady Macbeth and the witches prove to incite violence in Macbeth’s nature and lead ultimately to more evil entering the world. Finally, we can interpret the violence of the play as a criticism of the political and social instability of Jacobean times, rather than it being purely Macbeth’s fault, Shakespeare is exploring how the society itself encourages instability through the encouragement of Machiavellian ideas such as power grabbing, nepotism, greed and ambition.

If you’re studying Macbeth, you can click here to buy our full online course. Use the code “SHAKESPEARE” to receive a 50% discount!

You will gain access to  over 8 hours  of  engaging video content , plus  downloadable PDF guides  for  Macbeth  that cover the following topics:

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Stanford Humanities Today

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Gregory Jusdanis

Does literature make us better human beings? Can poetry lead us to moral action? Do novels encourage us to be more empathetic? These are age-old questions, of course. But I was thinking of them after finishing Steven Pinker’s much-talked about book, The Better Angels of our Nature. Why Violence has Declined .

Pinker, an internationally best-selling author, argues (via secondary evidence) that our society has been the most peaceful in history. Recognizing that he faces a skeptical reader, Pinker assembles nearly 800 pages to show how modernity abhors violence in the home, the neighborhood, and the globe.

If you think that the twentieth-century has produced the most conflict in history, Pinker has countless charts and graphs to persuade you otherwise. He demonstrates, for instance, that the Mongol invasions proportionally caused more deaths than the two world wars of the twentieth century.

Persuasive, the book is also overly long, overwhelmed by parataxis—one example following the other. At the same time, it promotes an End-of-History type of teleology and an untroubled faith in enlightenment thinking. Of all the factors he examines to explain our more irenic humanity, he elevates the power of reasoning. The argument turns out to be another version of the “civilizing process” theory and thus not really that original. Thus the conventionality of the explanation for the decline in violence gives the book a very anti-climactic ending.

Perhaps its sanguine view of humanity and the evolutionary sweep of the argument explain the panegyric treatment it has received in the press. It has become the book to gush over. (Remember the competition last year among critics to see who could heap the most uncritical praise on Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom ?) It is destined for the Pulitzer.

Pinker outlines an elegant and orderly story of moral progress in which there is little paradox or contradiction – no dialectic between the Apollonian and Dionysian forces but a path towards an angelic future. As a result, Pinker does not ask whether violence could take different forms. How could a peaceful people commit ecocide? How can those dedicated to social harmony exploit others economically? Why would people be so willing to defend their pacific life with weapons of mass destruction?

Violence, he says, is a problem of self-control. Was the Holocaust not a product of a civilized society? Was the dropping of the atomic bomb not an act of cold reason? Was the police officer spraying the students at UC Davis not a logical individual?

Sometimes Pinker is naïve, as when he points to the growing tolerance of racial difference and of homosexuality. Well, who essentialized racial and sexual identities in the first place? It seems that modern tolerance is a modern solution to modern constructs such as race and homosexuality. Furthermore, limited to physical force, his notion of violence does not sufficiently take into account economic domination or the merciless assault on the environment. We may no longer be warring but we are certainly warming ourselves to death. Perhaps we are patting ourselves on the back for helping each other climb unto precipice of a menacing volcano.

For those working in literature, it is Pinker’s rejection of empathy as a motivating factor in human behavior that raises concern. Empathy, he believes, may make us more sensitive to the existence of others but does not lead us to moral or practical action. In one respect Pinker is right. Writers, such as Lynn Hunt and Martha Nussbuam, have overblown the possibility of literary texts to “conduce certain type of citizenship.” ( Inventing Human Rights. A History and Cultivating Humanity. A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education .)

Surely this type of one-to-one correspondence, though desirable, is not always possible, as Zuzanne Keen has shown ( Empathy and the Novel ). At the same time, however, we may be expecting too much of literature by demanding of it practical effects while ignoring the multiple perspectives it promotes.

Although we can’t demonstrate conclusively that literature produces these results, can we do of reason? Ultimately what proof does Pinker offer for the power of enlightenment thinking other than conjecture? “Once a society has a degree of civilization in place, it is reason that offers the greatest hope for further reducing violence.” His pages of statistics prove less the force of reason than his faith in reason to bring about the end of force.

What literature may do, as even Pinker admits, is complicate our perceptions and encourage us to consider other viewpoints and even stand in the shoes of others. In this, literature has been always ahead of its time. Let me provide a few examples:

Aeschylus’ play the “Persians” was produced in 472 BCE, eight years after the Battle of Salamis when the Persian invaders had burned the city of Athens. Sitting in the Theater of Dionysus, below the Acropolis, Athenians could still see the evidence of Persian aggression. Yet, the play presents a sympathetic picture of the Persians. The chorus sings of “Persians widowed vain” and “mothers losing sons.” The Persian soldiers are “excellent in soul and nobly bred to grandeur,” but dying in “infamy, dishonor, and in ugliness.” We will never know how the Athenian audience reacted the play’s portrayal of the enemy. But what is important is that it had asked the audience to consider the enemy as mourning mothers and dying sons.

Jumping forth two thousand years, we come to Lessing’s powerful play, “Nathan the Wise” (1779). “We must, we simply must be friends,” Nathan pleads, as he tries to persuade the Knight to relinquish his hatred of Jews. With the Knight unmoved, Nathan asks “Are Jews and Christians rather Jews and Christians/ Than human beings?” For Nathan what is important is to say that “this is a man.”

Of course, we can shrug and ask about the practical consequences of the play. Obviously it did not prevent the spread of anti-Semitism. But it partook in wider discussions about the place of the marginalized in society. That its consequences can’t be measured empirically does not mean the play was inconsequential.

In the same way, by itself Uncle Tom’s Cabin could not have ended slavery. But it contributed to its end by enlarging conversations and by asking people to change their positions. Radclyffe Hall similarly asked readers to imagine the lesbian as daughter, neighbor, and friend rather than as an “abomination.”

To get us to think about ourselves in the position of the other person is what literature is good at. “Isn’t that what is most important about fiction,” Elizabeth Costello says in J. M Coetzee’s eponymous novel, “that it takes us out of ourselves, into other lives?”

Pinker, as a psychologist, argues that there is no empathy center in the brain with its own empathy neurons. I am sure he is right. He also says that empathy does not necessarily cause people to change their behavior, to transform policies and norms. But is this correct?

I continue to enjoy meat because I distance myself from my dinner, never allowing myself to see it as once our baby lamb or the fish in our aquarium. Could someone really harm someone else if he first saw her as a human being in possession of consciousness and body, if he put himself in her position, and imagined her pain and her joy?

“Can’t we simply be friends?” These are powerful words. We don’t sufficiently credit literature for expressing them through the ages, often decades ahead of history, philosophy, political science, sociology, statistical science, and psychology.

“With what stones, what blood, and what iron,” says the Greek poet Odysseus Elytis; “With what fire we are made/ Though we seem pure mist/ And they stone us and say/ That we walk with our head in the clouds.”

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