What is, or What should be.

I am at my parents’ house today, and I just ate breakfast in our breakfast nook attached to our kitchen. We have a little television in there, and I turned it on. At first, he Today show was on, and I watched a short bit about Al Roker getting a hip replacement. I warmed up my coffee and flipped through a few different channels until I stopped, with little rhyme or reason, on an interview with Tim O’Brien. He was talking about getting drafted during the Vietnam war. This interested me, so I remained on this channel. After several minutes, O’Brien made a statement that seemed profound to me. I quickly ran off to get a pencil and paper to write it down. This is what I wrote “stories are written to preserve, forever, what is or what should be.” If this is not Mr. O’brien’s exact quote, it bears the correct sentiment.

One of my reactionary thoughts to this statement is one of disagreement. Some of the best novels ever written don’t even contain what is, and certainly do not contain what should be either. What first comes to my mind is George Orwell’s novel titled 1984. The world Orwell describes is not the world that exists. Nor should the world of Big Brother and double think exist. If anything, Orwell’s story preserves what should not be.

Oh. Perhaps that is it then. It is not the world inside the story which Orwell wished to preserve, but the one outside. Certainly, the world was not perfect in 1948, when Orwell published 1984. But it looked awfully better than it had 3 years prior. Even so, I suspect it might be more accurate to suggest Orwell wanted to preserve certain ideals and a hopeful reverence for them, by vividly describing their opposites. Viewed in this way, I can see the merit to O’Brien’s words. I actually even like the idea. That I, or you, or him, or her can preserve, forever, that which should be; whatever it may be that should be. In fact, I like it a lot.