8/13/2019 Litreture Essay

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Amory Blaine who grew up with faith, with reverence for the transcendent reveries of mystics that had

once filled him with awe in the still hours of night – not anymore. He is now cynical. Cynical about

himself; his purpose; his life and the world at large. In trying to find out who he is he looks at two

antithesis: Tolstoy and Nietzsche. Between Faith and Nihilism. But he repudiates both.

He rejects the values and faith he has grown up with as he said, "There were no more wise men; there

were no more heroes... Amory had grown up to a thousand books, a thousand lies; he had listened

eagerly to people who pretended to know, who knew nothing. The mystical reveries of saints that had

once filled him with awe in the still hours of night, now vaguely repelled him." Why? Because everyone

cannot be right. Everyone has contradicting ideologies, so who is right?

One author in my humble opinion who shares his repudiation for values and faith is George Bernard

Shaw. Shaw mocks all values and faith. He derides morality, religion, education, society etc. He satirizes

everything, “All great truths begin as blasphemies.” As he mentioned in Annajanska. He even mocks

man, as quoted in George Bernard Shaw, his life and works: a critical biography (authorized), Archibald

Henderson, Stewart & Kidd; he said, “A critic recently described me, with deadly acuteness, as having 'a

kindly dislike of my fellow-creatures.' Perhaps dread would have been nearer the mark than dislike; for

man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.”

He lampoons morality, he said in Maxims for Revolutionists, “Vice is waste of life. Poverty, obedience,

and celibacy are the canonical vices” and “The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mold a child's

character.” He believed that morality was of no benefit to oneself. He believes the worst of human

nature and motives; having a sneering disbelief of anyone who believed in God as he postulated,

“beware of the man whose god is in the skies” and “To understand a saint, you must hear the devil's

advocate.” In a play called ‘Back to Methuselah’, Shaw has the serpent saying to Eve in the Garden of

Eden, “you see things and you say why? But I dream things that never were and I say why not?” from

this we can see that he does not care about vices, as a matter of fact he enjoys them. This fact can be

furthered proved by the following, “Never resist temptation: prove all things.” His dislike for religion

may be summed up in one statement, “Do not give your children moral and religious instruction unless

you are quite sure that they will not take it seriously. However, he believed for success and progress we

must not believe in the maxims of the past. He must create our own. We must be unreasonable without

values and faith. He believes that someone who believes in reason is lost. I will prove that he accedes to

Amory’s rejection of values and faith with one final pithy quotation, “The reasonable man adapts

himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all

progress depends on the unreasonable man.” 

Indecently, I believe that the illustrious Rudyard Kipling is an author who repudiates Amory belief. He

postulates in one of his poems, “Twenty bridges from tower to Kew – Wanted to know what the River

knew, …… For they were young and the river was old…” From this we can see that he believes the

people should follow the learned, the wise. He believed that whoever follows that regulations and laws

will survive, will be successful as can be cited from his most famous work, The Jungle Book, “Now this is

the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but

the Wolf that shall break it must die.” His poetry is the affirmation of morality, Virtue and ideals in the

face of cynicism, which is a threat to civilization as it depends on values and faith.

Perhaps his best work to prove this would be ‘IF’ , “If you can keep your head when all about you; Are

losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you….” He is urging us

8/13/2019 Litreture Essay

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here to have faith even though we might be wrong, we must press on believing in what we do. We must

teach our children traditional values and be strong. Whoever pushes it aside will be in trouble. And the

success of civilization is his principal theme. He stresses ideals which will make civilization prosper,

procreation and protection. Hence, Faith and ideals.