Literary Criticism: Do you also think that epics and novels can only represent the whole truth in literature?

‘Tragedy and the Whole Truth’ by Aldous Huxley is an important text in the literary criticism of English literature. The text discusses two very important issues: one is ‘tragedy’ and the other is ‘whole truth’. We all know more or less about tragedy and many tragic plays and tragic dramas have become world famous. We can take Oedipus as an example. Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Hamlet could also come to our mind. Whole truth, on the other hand, can be said to be a fairly new concept because before Huxley, very few people mentioned about this issue.

So, first of all, we need to know what Huxley tires to mean by introducing the term ‘whole truth’. By ‘whole truth’, he implies a kind of truth which is ‘super truth’. It is not ‘two and two makes four’ or ‘the earth travels around the sun’ type of truth or fact. Rather, in respect to literature, expressing every detail means whole truth. We may feel that giving every detail of everything in literature is a modern idea, but it has existed since ancient times. Besides portraying every detail, whole truth also brings forward the reality. Huxley finds such an example of whole truth in a description taken from Homer’s Odyssey. One day, Odysseus and his companions saw a monster swallowing six of their companions alive. Having seen that, other terrified companions moved to a safe place. After reaching ashore, they first looked for a safe place for themselves, instead of crying for their lost companions; and once they got a secured place, they first cooked food and filled their stomach and then started shedding tears for their friends before their exhausted bodies succumbed to sleep. This is a good example of whole truth. Many of us may think that what was the need of showing it and how could they eat food without crying when they saw that the demon chewed and devoured their companions. But Homer was realistic and knew that first they would need food and the question of crying would come later.

Over the ages, authors wrote about the concept of whole truth and Huxley tried to show that. However, whole truth cannot be manifested in tragedy because in tragedy, we shed all the lights on a fragmented part or sorrows and pains of life. So, there is a difference between tragedy and whole truth. Whole truth has been largely popular at present age. As a result, whole truth is perfect for novel.

Two types of literature could gain popularity in portraying whole truth. Epic should come first and here we can consider Homer as the best example. The advantage with epic is that it is, by nature, very long in size and so easier to depict whole truth. If it is a 200-page epic, the author can reveal every detail. Portraying whole truth does not only mean expressing all the details, but manifesting the reality as well. In respect to epic, an incident can be portrayed from each and every angle and all the related elements can be shown perfectly.

Another literary form can successfully show the whole truth and that is novel. Same thing can be said about novel. Novel is very long and most of the novels are around 100 pages. So, an author can beautifully present each and every detail in a novel. Another notable characteristic of novel is that the large span of life can be extensively illustrated in this form of literature. So, novel is ideal for whole truth.

Looking at other literary forms other than epic and novel, we can find drama. Even though drama, especially tragic drama, is long, whole truth can be successfully portrayed because tragedy is built on a serious setting and its sole objective is to direct it towards the end. So, the serious mood of tragedy can be diluted at the introduction of light-hearted materials. If that happens, then perhaps many audiences would not like tragedy that much. I do not see many instances of portraying whole truth in tragedy.

Poem is a very popular form of literature. Depicting whole truth in poem is fairly hard too. The problem in relation to poem is that in poetry, emotion is presented through a few lines or stanzas and there is little scope of portraying every detail in poem. Poets often try to present universal or timeless ideas. To do that or present something serious, it becomes tough to focus on whole truth in poetry. Long poems are often written in epic form and I already mentioned that epics are perfect for beautifully depicting whole truth. However, irrespective of literary forms, be it epic or tragedy or novel, the focus of the author is the most important thing. If he or she wants to put emphasis on whole truth, only then it will become possible to portray whole truth. On the other hand, if the whole truth is not given importance then whole truth cannot be shown even in novel.

Literary Criticism: What are “chemically pure” and “chemically impure” in literature?

Aldous Huxley’s Tragedy and the Whole Truth is a very important text in literary criticism as he has created a new window for the readers with this piece of writing. An idea has existed from the ancient time that tragedy or tragic drama is the best form of literature. So, we always consider Sophocles' Oedipus or Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Macbeth as some of the best pieces of literature and it is also thought that people’s emotions can be best revealed through tragedy. Huxley refers to this kind of idea or thought as chemically pure. That means, many people consider non-tragedies as of low quality. However, Huxley, through his essays, tries to imply that what is chemically impure can represent whole truth.

First of all, we need to know what chemically pure means. By introducing this term, Huxley does not intend to relate it with chemistry. Rather, he stresses on portraying the best thoughts, best feelings of human minds in literature. We can see that tragedy dramas are of very serious mood and incorporate serious dialogues or interactions among the characters, thoughts and feelings of very serious nature. We can also feel the seriousness in the presentation of the drama and as a result, small, irrelevant matters are not given much importance. This seriousness in presentation and the high standard is what Huxley calls chemically pure.

On the other hand, by saying chemically impure, Huxley denotes the representation of every detail of a story or set of stories, though not of so serious mood as of tragedy. In his regard, Huxley takes an example from the novel Tom Jones by Henry Fielding where the female protagonist, Sophia Western, falls on the ground while attempting to ride on a Western horse. The incident creates some humors and the way Fielding describes the incident is also very humorous. In tragic dramas, we cannot see a scene like this because it is chemically impure.

A lot of debates and arguments were going on about truth. Truth is obviously portrayed in tragedy and to establish the truth is one of the objectives of tragedy. In Macbeth, we can see that greed brings destruction and in Oedipus, we can see that arrogance causes downfall. Establishing this kind of higher truth is the objective of most of the tragedies. So, chemically pure literature is viewed by many with sheer importance and there are many who do not want to see chemically impure literature as of high standard. However, Huxley is against this idea and he thinks that higher truth is undoubtedly established in tragedy, but literature being chemically pure could also represent whole truth and it definitely has some importance. Huxley has taken the idea of whole truth with great importance and talked about the term in a recurring manner throughout the essay. Huxley wants to say that whole truth, by no means, diminish the standard of literature. Rather, whole truth could help increase the standard of literature.

Huxley attempts to answer whether chemically impure literature represents whole truth by introducing the example of heroine’s falling down from horseback, an incident taken from Tom Jones by Fielding, which sets up a humorous scene. We may find this humorous incident in our everyday lives and portraying every detail of this kind of incidents from our daily lives is actually whole truth. Huxley thinks that in literature, chemically pure is not a problem in establishing whole truth. So, Huxley opines that chemically impure literature can and must represent the whole truth.

Huxley also says that we have reached an age where the importance and popularity of whole truth is increasing and to establish whole truth, we need chemically impure elements. If we look at our daily lives, we can realize that our lives are full of all kinds of incidents.  Here, as we find sorrow, pain, despair, we also find delight, joy and happiness. We also find comic elements in life as well. So, in the current-day literature, we can see more emphasis given on illustrating the whole truth and it has a connection with the growing importance of novel. Novel is long in size and it is easier to represent whole truth in novel. So, this is the age of chemically impure literature. At last, I would like to say that there is no alternative of chemically impure elements for displaying whole truth in literature.

Literary Criticism: Compare Tragedy and Whole Truth

How does Aldous Huxley compare tragedy and whole truth in literature?

Tragedy and the Whole Truth is a major work in the field of literary criticism of English literature. Aldous Huxley presented a beautiful analysis of tragedy and whole truth and showed us a new way of thinking. Prior to Huxley, many people believed that tragedy is the best form of literature and only tragedy will survive not whole truth for it is not a good thing. However, Huxley showed that great writers did not neglect whole truth and even while writing tragedy, they presented whole truth.

First we need to know what tragedy and whole truth actually means. By tragedy we mean something sad. In literature, tragedy means tragedy play. Many famous drama of world literature is tragic drama. There are many famous Greek tragedy plays. William Shakespeare, the famous English dramatist, also wrote tragic dramas such as Macbeth and Hamlet, which became very popular. These tragedy plays survived for centuries and provided food for thought to people.

By “whole truth” Aldous Huxley referred to the ordinary matters of our daily lives and presenting them properly. As the instance of whole truth, he mentioned Homer’s Odyssey. Odyssey tells the story of the journey of Odysseus to Ithaca, his homeland. During this journey, he and his companions faced great dangers. Once, a monster ate six of his companions. After reaching to a shelter in the island, Odysseus’ companions, instead of crying, first searched for food and then mourned for them and fell asleep crying.

Tragedy is higher and chemically pure. Because the author presents only one idea meaning, we only see sufferings, losses, pain in tragedy and all these are present in human nature. Hence, any good tragedy has great effect on us and it has a power called “Catharsis” which lightens up the sorrow of human heart. The better the tragedy, the powerful the Catharsis becomes. Catharsis helps us to overcome sorrows. Hence, tragedy is given great importance in all the countries.

On the other hand, whole truth is chemically impure because it contains many more ingredients than tragedy, but Aldous Huxley does not think less of it than tragedy. In his regard, Huxley takes an example from the novel Tom Jones by Henry Fielding where the female protagonist, Sophia Western, falls on the ground while attempting to ride on a Western horse. The incident creates some humors and the way Fielding describes the incident is also very humorous. In tragic dramas, we cannot see a scene like this because it is chemically impure. At the same time, we also understand that whole truth suits novel very well; the main genre of current-day literature. Hence, we cannot neglect whole truth and it is no less inferior to tragedy. What Huxley tried to say is that if whole truth is used properly then it would become richer than tragedy. At the same time, the author can also utilize the artistic features of tragedy.

Huxley wrote this essay at a time when novel became a very popular genre and drama and poem were losing their charm. Cinema has become very popular and by “reading books” people started referring to reading novels.  If we look at our lives we would see that we do not read or watch drama that much and very few people these days read poetry or enjoy reading it. Most of the time, we study novels. From time to time, we watch tragic plays in theatres or on television but they are not so popular. But Aldous Huxley thinks that both tragic play and novel have great importance and very much necessary for human beings.

The absence of these two elements will destroy the balance of the world and a major damage will happen to human through process. Hence, the writers of tragic plays should pay attention to whole truth and writers of novels should learn from tragic plays. 

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.