Title: Quo Vadis
Author: Henry Sienkiewicz
File Under: Historical Fiction
“Those of us who have been true readers all our life fully realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors.” – C. S. Lewis
Normally I would never post about a book I haven't read. I make an exception here because of a comment we got on a previous post about a book beloved by our family and friends; a book that is formative for young men. I didn't publish the comment because it was a little personal. Here I've edited it.
The reader said:
And what to do about letting them read things that are more mature? We got a recommended history book: Quo Vadis.
Here are a couple of lines (I didn't read it, but found these):
“Senators, trembling in their souls, went to the Palatine to magnify the song of the “Periodonices,” and go wild with him amid orgies of naked bodies, wine, and flowers. ”
“I judge, lord, that ten thousand naked maidens make less impression than one.”
“There would be a new orgy, and moreover a fouler and a viler one. “
I just don't want to be the person that let my son put these thoughts in his mind.
And the classics, the “scene” in Grapes of Wrath has creeped me out forever. Lord of the Flies is on so many high school book lists. How do you approach this? Reading as realm that is most importantly about worldly education or pleasing God by putting no evil thing before your eyes. How to be in the world, but not of it?
(And someone else had commented on that post on Freckles, a great book for a slightly younger age group, perhaps, which deals with an orphan boy who is physically abused. So, here, in general, we have the idea of introducing children to “themes.”)
Probably a lot of us are still reeling over our own contact with worldly culture and downright bad stuff as young people, including maybe being exposed to more prurient material than was good for us.
And now we are the guardians of the gate. We are the parents.
We have work, a lot of laundry to do, everything is sticky and hot, Auntie Leila says make your menu plans, and on top of it we are going to have to read thousands of pages of fiction and fact every year to make sure our darlings are getting educated without pollution? How can this be?
Too much! Isn't it easier just to hide it all from them?
Since I hadn't read this particular book, but know that friends and family have with great delight, I decided to ask my amazing son-in-law, John, aka The Artist, intelligent reader, former boy, teacher of boys in high school, Christian gentleman of noble thoughts, just what he would say in defense of the book under suspicion. (I could have asked any other guy in our family, but since he's with adolescent boys all day long at school, and has thought at length about how to educate that particular creature, I went to him.)
From John Folley:
First of all, I will agree that Quo Vadis has adult themes. I probably wouldn't recommend it for kids younger than a freshman in high school (though if it were read with the family, even those younger children might benefit). However, I think that it is really important how these adult themes are presented.
I think Quo Vadis does a wonderful job of presenting the lusts, excesses, and pagan qualities of Rome and contrasting them brilliantly with the humility, chastity, service, and real human love (raised to a level of grace) that Christianity makes possible. He characterizes the depravity truthfully as dehumanizing and deeply unsatisfying.
These images in this book are not meant to titillate. I think it very forgivable for a mother to be quite worried about it (even paranoid) when so many authors do make it their business to draw children by cheap passions into their stories.
[Which is why the LMLD Library Project says stay away from the YA shelf – Auntie Leila]
However I would argue that looking at Quo Vadis this way would be like
mistaking the Last Judgement of Michelangelo for pornography because it has naked bodies in it.
This worry reinforces my strong opinion that we need to be a culture that knows art better – – visual art, musical art, and literary art. I want to address one thought from this reader in this light:
“Reading as realm that is most importantly about worldly education or pleasing God by putting no evil thing before your eyes.”
Reading certainly is about worldly education and being versed in culture. However it is more deeply a study of the human character in relationship to the world. I know Saint Thomas More among others thought that the study of literature was extremely important for these reasons, but more importantly because it allowed our minds to be trained to understand the best, highest, and most perfect literature: the Sacred Scriptures.
I think it is very important literature not be looked upon as merely a worldly trap where there is little to gain but that we risk “putting evil before our eyes.” There is a great deal to gain besides some fleeting moments of entertainment.
My suggestion to this mother might be to read the story (not just skim it!!!) either parallel to her son or even in a family setting where discussions about the themes of the story might more easily take place.
I know some of the best discussions about morality that I've had with my parents sprang from reading With Fire and Sword as a family when I was still quite young.
His response, “Yes, I just read Quo Vadis! It's really well done, presenting Roman decadence in a negative way.
“Very unappealing. I didn't want to go to an orgy for about three weeks after reading it.”
(I'm not trying to belittle the issue, believe me. However, mark well, the devil hates laughter!)
Truly, once a child leaves the latent phase of development, where sexuality is not uppermost in his consciousness — at about the age when puberty starts — he becomes aware of things he never noticed before (and this goes for girls as well). Even if our age had any sense of protecting children's innocence at all, we would, on reflection, realize it's part of our fallen world. It's simply part of growing up to hear things, to see things, and to think about things. Our own reading testifies to the truth of this even in other, less overtly profligate, eras.
Our own healthy realism and solid moral grounding go a long way to keeping children on the right track to understanding of the moral order. Acknowledging the existence of “themes” and being willing to talk about them. appropriate to the age of the child and our knowledge of his character, is the way to go.We have to let a good cultural formation — a wide familiarity with time-tested literature — take place in his development. It's about letting others help us, including artists — to get the child to the other side (the other side here being a robust, moral, well formed adulthood) — without necessarily having experienced all the things he ought to avoid.
I would add my own thought here to The Artist's (based on meeting his own father, who is keenly interested in reading with his sons): A boy will be safely guided by his father. My recommendation is to share the burden of all the reading, and get your husband to delve into some Sienkiewicz with his boys!
Anastasia says
Dear Auntie Leila,
I could not applaud this more. I also was introduced to Quo Vadis, by my father and with my brother, in our homeschool, and I think it was amongst our first introduction to such themes. What better way to introduce your child to much of the fallen nature of our humanity than in this light? I fear more for the young people, especially boys, who are completely naive to those themes until they are confronted with them in a much more sordid manner by other kids who haven’t had the advantage of that kind of cultural and family context. Thanks for talking about Quo Vadis, and these themes in general.
Ajda says
And I would just like to thank the Chief for being awesome.
Gabi Reczek says
You are so wise. Thank you for being so generous with your insights.