Article by Phoenix writer Caitlin Hanratty ’25:
As long as there’s been literature, there has been violence in literature. But how effective has that violence been at making a point? I believe literature can be just as moving, if not more so, without graphic scenes.
One of the earliest examples of literary masterpieces is Homer’s The Iliad. The Iliad is a tale of the extreme violence and subsequent suffering of the Greek and Trojan people during the ten-year-long Trojan War. The epic poem’s most notorious spectacle of violence is the image of Achilles dragging Hector’s corpse from a chariot. Although Hector’s death was a gut-wrenching, sad scene, we don’t remember The Iliad for the injustices that occurred. Most people don’t even know who Hector is. However, people do know the bloodthirsty warrior Achilles. The Iliad is full of loss, pain, destruction, and despair, but all people currently know it for is its most violent character.
In the 20th century, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair made headlines by describing the atrocities of the meat industry in vivid detail. It criticized the exploitation of workers and the conditions they had to operate under, but that’s not what readers got out of it. Sinclair is famously quoted for saying “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” The Jungle is a cautionary tale about using violence to get across a point, because although Sinclair intended to inspire change and outrage, the public was generally too busy feeling nauseous to focus on the injustice of it all. Although factories have been cleaned up since, and safety precautions have been prioritized, worker exploitation still happens all across the world.
“A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift suggests cannibalism as an effective solution to Ireland’s severe economic crisis. Overly high rent, unjustifiable trade laws, and expensive taxes made it nearly impossible for Irish families to put food on the table. So why not eat babies? He describes the process of breeding the children like animals, slaughtering them, and preparing them to be eaten. The essay was met with public shock and outrage, but despite the outcry, the conflict between Ireland and England continued for 100 more years.
All of these pieces use violence to draw attention to a deeper issue, but the deeper issue is never what audiences remember. Even when I myself was writing this, I had to look back to my Mr. Huggard British Literature notes to find out why Jonathan Swift suggested eating babies in the first place. Violence doesn’t make readers think about its societal implications, only about the violence itself.
Jane Austen, on the other hand, is known as one of the most talented writers in history.
Her most famous novel Pride and Prejudice is still as beloved now as it was when it was first published in 1813. The novel covers themes such as family dynamics, love, social stratification, and reputation. It has maintained its status as an iconic story in pop culture and is renowned not only for its timeless tale but for its incredible writing, and there is not one scene of violence in the entire novel.
The famous writer Walt Whitman lived through the United States Civil War. The Civil War was a heartbreaking time in American history. There was bloodshed between states of the same nation, and between brothers on opposite sides of the war. The Civil War was a common topic of Whitman’s work, but his most famous poem from the time period doesn’t depict graphic images of the battlefield. “O Captain! My Captain!” isn’t about the fighting and the bloodshed, but rather about the bittersweet feeling of war having been won, but without the Union leader Abraham Lincoln being alive with his men to appreciate it. Whitman focuses on the loss of war, not the action of it, and because of this 159 years later we remember “O Captain! My Captain!” for its deeper meaning, not just its images.
In 1879, Henrik Ibsen caused outrage with his feminist play “A Doll’s House.”
It faced censorship and was banned from countries like China, Germany, and Britain. He wrote about a complicated dynamic between wife and husband, about rebelling against domestic norms, without depictions of domestic violence. His play ended simply, the main character Nora slams a door shut, symbolically shutting the door on her past way of life. Such a simple ending got this play banned in multiple countries. There was no need for graphic depictions to create waves of impact— and there never was.
What would happen if we emphasized pacifist pieces of literature rather than violent ones? We would get the same meaning, if not more, out of what we read, instead of just nurturing our morbid curiosities.
But I’m just an eighteen-year-old girl elbows deep in a Stephen King novel, so what do I know?
