Literary Criticism: The whole truth is peculiarly acceptable and coming

Tragedy and the Whole Truth is the best work of Aldous Huxley and a very important essay in the field of literary criticism of English literature. In this essay, he separately tried to show that both tragedy and whole truth are necessary for literature. All of us are more or less familiar with tragedy but we do not have much knowledge about whole truth. By whole truth, Huxley meant that truth which represents the small matters of literature and shows the real life condition. Ordinary literature is commonly referred as idealism but whole truth represents the reality instead of idealism.

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Huxley believed that whole truth remained in literature from ancient times. Supporting his view, he mentioned Homer’s epic Odysseus and Tom Jones of Henry Fielding. Whole truth has become popular in our time and it is only increasing. He showed various reasons why whole truth is becoming popular and people are enjoying it.

According to Huxley, tragedy is gradually losing its popularity. By tragedy, we mainly understand the Greek tragedy plays and plays of some Elizabethan dramatists including Shakespeare. Huxley thinks that tragedy is no more popular in the twentieth century. It has not ended entirely but writers are not writing tragedy plays that much. He sighted the acceptance of whole truth by human beings as the main reason. It is the time of whole truth.

Talking about why whole truth has become popular we have to keep it in mind that human thoughts have changed. Many changes have taken place in the world history in the last one hundred year. Novel is the main genre of literature. Theatre has lost its popularity and television and cinema have taken that place. When we talk about “Entertainment”, we mainly refer to television, cinema, radio and novel. People, in this new age, want to know more and only whole truth suits them very well. Tragedy cannot fulfill human curiosity for its goal is limited. Whole truth, on the contrary, is wide and open.

Tragedy creates Catharsis in people’s hearts and helps him to forget pain and sorrow. On the other hand, the goal of whole truth is acceptance and resignation inducing catharsis. In Odysseus, we see that the monster eats six companions of Odysseus but they did not mourn them instantly. First, they go to safe shelter, arrange for food and then mourn their friends. Crying for their friends, they fell asleep. Only whole truth can give us this power of accepting reality. Life has become tougher in the modern age and acceptance has higher value than lofty ideals.

Present day writers, instead of presenting an isolated picture, try to give whole picture to the readers. Hence, whole truth has become so popular. Huxley thinks that present day writers are more interested to present whole truth. They do not just narrate an isolated event but what preceded and what followed it and all the intimate details including food and other objects. They do it because the readers also want to know about it.

It has already been said that current age is the age of novel. When a novel becomes popular, TV drama or movies are made based on it. Novel can best represent whole truth for it has a huge canvas and has lots of space. The writer can mention many things and the readers are not only interested to know any particular event or one person but also other events and other persons related to that event as well.

The male and female protagonists are writing letters. The writer will talk about the papers, the time of writing, their emotions and thought processes and their problems as well in the novel in a very beautiful manner. That is why, novel is more suitable for whole truth.

The current age is the age of whole truth and we should keep in mind while reading literature as well. But Huxley does not think that tragedy is entirely unnecessary for people of current age. The lofty ideals and depth of emotions present in tragedy is very much necessary in human lives as well.