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Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped/Literature: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
== ''[[Discworld]]'' ==
* [[Terry Pratchett]]'s [[Young Adult]] ''[[Discworld]]'' novels drop anvils labeled "take personal responsibility" so often you think you're being attacked by an anvil-wielding 82nd Airborne. But it works.▼
*
* Terry Pratchett's early Discworld novel ''[[Small Gods]]'' deals with the difference between believing in God and believing in church. The only character who still believes in Om at the novel's start is a naive young boy, while His church controls an entire nation. The anvil is illustrated in the comparison between simple, honest Brutha and [[Knight Templar]] Deacon Vorbis, who is ready to incite holy war with anyone and everyone, despite the fact that Om Himself states point blank that holy war was never His intention, even more so in the distant future of the ending:
* One is literally a matter of life and death:
{{quote|'''Gandalf:''' ''Many that live deserve death, and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment, for not even the very wise can see all ends.''}}▼
{{quote|''"I am on nobody's side because nobody is on my side. Nobody cares for the woods anymore."''}}▼
* ''[[The Hobbit (novel)|The Hobbit]]'', especially what Thorin says to Bilbo near the end:▼
{{quote|''"There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell!"''}}▼
== Other works ==
* ''[[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'': "All right. I'll ''go'' to hell, then." Called the greatest phrase ever in American literature for a reason.
* ''[[Night]]'' by Elie Wiesel: The Holocaust happened, and we have to come to terms with that. It was a dark mark on human history that should never be repeated. Real human beings with feelings were slaughtered for no reason other than their heritage. Genocide is bad. It cannot happen again.
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* [[Ben Elton]]'s ''High Society'' makes some very important points about the harm created by drug prohibition and the power wielded by sensationalist tabloid media, and still manages to be a thoroughly entertaining read.
* The novel ''[[Momo]]'' by [[Michael Ende]]. The book's message about how we need to make time for each other and all the things we love in our lives is ''really'' obvious—and you couldn't imagine the book being nearly as good without it.
▲* ''[[Starship Troopers (novel)|Starship Troopers]]'' by [[Robert A. Heinlein]] drops anvils about military service.
▲** "If you want to participate as a citizen, you have to serve your country, up to and including ''being prepared to'' quite literally fight, even die, for the privilege. And it ''is'' a privilege, not a right."
▲** Also, an [[Badass Army|all-volunteer army that's well trained,]] [[Powered Armor|well equipped]], and [[No One Gets Left Behind|knows the value of the individuals that serve in it]] trumps an army that treats its infantry [[Redshirt Army|like so many potatoes to be thrown at enemies]], even if the latter greatly outnumbers the former. Basically, if your idea of troop management is "[[Bad Boss|let 'em die like pigs]], [[We Have Reserves]]", [[What Measure Is a Mook?|then those "reserves"]] [[Mook Face Turn|are going to]] [[Screw This, I'm Outta Here|run out]] [[Villain Ball|a lot sooner than you think]]... [[Laser-Guided Karma|and you are going to]] ''[[Karmic Death|deserve]]'' [[Hoist by His Own Petard|to be]] [[Humiliation Conga|screwed over]] [[Senseless Sacrifice|once that happens]].
▲** Another perspective taken is that Heinlein took the morally-brightest possible example of a militarized society (the Terran Federation) and compared them to the worst example possible (the bugs). The anvil falls from the comparison between the two.
▲** There's also the Anvil that "violence never solves anything" is wishful thinking. Yes, it ''is'' preferable and best that you look for a non-violent solution to any given problem. But at the same time, sometimes that simply ''isn't going to work''. Insisting on avoiding ''any'' violence once it's clear that a compromise can't be reached is dangerous in itself.
▲** Lastly, there are two aesops regarding sexism and racism. ''Johnny Rico'' is ''Juan'' Rico<ref>Juan Rico's name was known to the reader from the beginning but its the final paragraph that drops a mention that his family's ancestral language, which they still speak at home on formal occasions, is Tagalog, which would mean that Juan Rico is from the Philippines.</ref> and his girlfriend Carmen is an officer and a pilot, trying to demonstrate an integrated service being the ideal.
* ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]'' wouldn't have been half as effective if Aldous Huxley had been even the least bit subtle.
* Norman Juster's ''[[The Phantom Tollbooth]]'' drops the learning-is-fun anvil pretty early on, and keeps picking it up and dropping it again. This strategy would not work if the book were not also ''funny as hell''—it reads like a combination of [[Shel Silverstein]], [[James Thurber]], and [[Douglas Adams]]. Kudos to Norton Juster for also throwing in enough [[Parental Bonus]] moments to keep the book funny and relevant.
* Harper Lee's ''[[To Kill a Mockingbird]].'' Enough said.
{{quote|''"Atticus, he was real nice..." His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them." He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.''}}
* ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four
** The chief Anvil in both is about individuality versus conformity and the important of holding onto the truth that's right in front of your eyes. As long as you have that, you are still free, no matter what anyone else does to you.
▲* [[Terry Pratchett]]'s [[Young Adult]] ''[[Discworld]]'' novels drop anvils labeled "take personal responsibility" so often you think you're being attacked by an anvil-wielding 82nd Airborne. But it works.
▲* [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Discworld/Hogfather|Hogfather]]'' drops the anvil that humans need to learn stories when they're young—that they ''need'' to believe in silly things like [[Santa Claus]] and the tooth fairy, so that when they get older, they can believe in other things that don't exist without people believing in them and acting on them—like Justice, Mercy, Duty, and that sort of thing.
* Though all of [[Ayn Rand]]'s novels are [[Anvilicious]], the unsubtle political messages in ''We The Living'' come off more acceptably than those in her later works, because it targets Russian Communists rather than generic [[Strawman Political]] equivalents.
** The same qualifies for Howard Roark's [[Author Tract]] at the end of ''The Fountainhead''. Regardless of whether you agree with its content, it's passionately written, very moving, and completely devoid of subtlety. It helps that it appears in a context where one would expect to hear (and to listen respectfully) to a passionate speech appealing to universal principles and a sense of justice: {{spoiler|the end of a criminal trial.}}
* [[John Steinbeck]]'s ''
* ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'' basically consisted of Harriet Beecher Stowe gathering together a whole bunch of stories of actual people who were actually enslaved, then changing the names and adding in a plot to tie it together.
** It drops another on the caring of children - if you expect a child to be wicked and immoral, that's exactly how they'll act.
* ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'' as a tract against human self-importance in general, and English society in particular. And, of course, the final anvil dropped in that book—that misanthropy isn't always a good attitude to take toward the failings of humankind.
* ''[[A Modest Proposal]]'', also by Jonathan Swift, took on the British policies and attitudes towards the [[The Irish Question|Irish]] by proposing that the Irish sell their children to the aristocracy as [[I'm a Humanitarian|food]] in a [[Refuge in Audacity|
* ''The Feminine Mystique'' dropped a big fat anvil of "society shouldn't pressure women to be housewives if they'd rather have careers." Seems too obvious to bother mentioning now, but it was quite controversial when it was published in 1963.
* ''The Crucible'', as well as almost any other leftist fiction written during the Second Red Scare, and the height of McCarthyism: pointing fingers is ''wrong''.
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** The book also has a deeper anvil dropped about the individual's responsibility for the [[Crapsack World|evils of the modern world]]. Almost every character death could have been prevented by Yossarian, had he actually done anything, and his friends continue to die around him until {{spoiler|he finally balls up and sticks it to [[The Man]]}}.
* The essay "Body Ritual Among the [[Sdrawkcab Name|Nacirema]]" was a not-very-subtle jab at both anthropology and American culture.
* One [[Sherlock Holmes]] story,
▲* Many of these in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''.
▲{{quote|'''Gandalf:''' ''Many that live deserve death, and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment, for not even the very wise can see all ends.''}}
▲** For the series in general: "There is good in the world. There is also bad in the world, but the good is worth fighting for."
▲** "Never leave your friends behind."
▲** One of the most powerful anvils dropped, yet oddly one of the most often missed, was how truly evil despair and defeatism are. All of the heroes keep pushing on despite apparent hopelessness, and eventually win through and defeat the [[Big Bad]]. By contrast, the secondary villians—Saruman and Denethor—are both corrupted by their own despair into joining the wrong side, or giving up and committing suicide while leaving family and friends to die; and are both eventually destroyed.
▲** There's a rather lovely scene at the end of ''[[The Two Towers]]'' when Sam is talking about his very favorite stories, and how things go so bad that you wonder how anything could ever go back to the way it does before, and yet it does. Not only is it a not-so-subtle "This is what's happening right now to the person saying it" moment, but it perfectly encapsulates the anvil mentioned here.
▲** Treebeard's comment when Merry and Pippin ask him about what side he's on. Considering that Tolkien wrote this before green anvils were being dropped like the Blitzkrieg, the message is pretty powerful:
▲{{quote|''"I am on nobody's side because nobody is on my side. Nobody cares for the woods anymore."''}}
▲** The movie follows up with a second anvil when Treebeard is promped into choosing a side when he discovers that Saruman has been cutting down the trees, the lesson being: if you refuse to take a side because YOU have no personnal stake in it, it will come back to bite you in the ass later.
▲** And, of course, the obvious messages of the One Ring: "Power Corrupts", and "The End Does Not Justify The Means".
▲** One of the most important and poignant Aesops in all of Tolkien's works is that times change and that all things, no matter how good or beautiful, will someday end. The First Age of Middle-earth, a time of immense beauty and magic when the gods walked the earth, ended without ever coming again. The whole race of the elves is a testament to this Aesop. Because of their immortality, the elves wither away from grief and longing of the Undying Lands if they stay on Middle-earth too long. The mortality of humans is portrayed as a ''good thing'', because man is able to pass to a new world freely. More so, the same applies to the Shire, in the Book at least. The Scouring of the Shire drops an anvil about the safety of Home and personal investment in a fight.
▲* ''The Hobbit'', especially what Thorin says to Bilbo near the end:
▲{{quote|''"There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell!"''}}
▲* One [[Sherlock Holmes]] story (The Sign of Four) had Dr. Watson blatantly chastising Holmes for the dangers of his cocaine habit. Although it's often thought that having a character give this lecture was either prescient or a lucky guess, in reality, it was not: doctors already knew that cocaine was dangerous when used as a recreational drug, but the idea that drug sales could and/or should be restricted had not yet been imagined, let alone implemented. (When the idea was suggested some years later, Doyle was among its strongest supporters.) At this point in time, it was perfectly possible to buy arsenic or strychnine at the apothecary's without any formality greater than signing a book, and there was no doubt that both of those drugs were pure poisons.
** ''The Adventure of the Yellow Face'' contains a remarkably progressive anti-racist message for its time. The client hires Holmes to find out why his wife keeps asking him for money and not revealing what it is for. He also spies her making visits to a cottage and spots someone with a hideous jaundiced and deformed face from the window. He suspects a blackmailing plot, but when Holmes enters the cottage and confronts the yellow-faced individual, it is revealed to be a young black child wearing a mask. Turns out the wife was previously in an interracial marriage before her husband died, and she has been hiding their child out of fear that her current husband will leave her if he finds out that she was married to a black man. The story ends with the client picking up the child, kissing the young girl, and saying "I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being."
* [[The Bible|The New Testament]]. Jesus wasn't all parables and allegories. He said some pretty blunt things about hypocrisy and following the commandments. (The scene where he bowled over the businessmen's tables in the Temple comes to mind.)
** His biggest Anvil that he dropped was his [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]] leveled at the Pharisees (The religious leaders of his time), calling them out for their hypocrisy and how they were leading the people away from heaven and onto the road to hell.
*
* Dr. Seuss's ''[[The Lorax]]''. Seuss speaks against logging, environmental destruction, or greed and short-sightedness in general? Given that he himself removed the line "I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie" when informed that Erie was no longer a dead lake, the second and third seem probable.
** Also from ''The Lorax'': "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."
** ''[[Horton Hears a Who!]]'' is just as anvilicious. And ridiculously necessary, considering the simplicity of the message.
{{quote|A person's a person, no matter how small.}}
** ''The Butter Battle Book,'' is about the Cold War arms race, of all things.
** And the anti-racism message of ''The Sneeches''. In fact, a great many of his books drop a pretty obvious anvil of some sort; but then, subtlety is not necessarily useful or effective when writing for children.
* ''[[His Dark Materials]]''{{'}}s condemnation of repressive institutions ([[Word of God]] says it isn't only condemning religion, although whether Pullman came up with that later after the backlash is debatable) and messages promoting secularism and the need to improve this world rather than hoping for paradise in an afterlife wouldn't have been nearly as effective if they had been subtle, mostly because these ideas weren't as widespread at the time (and especially not in young-adult books).
* ''[[Frankenstein]].'' [[Science Is Bad|Be careful toying with the natural order of things]], because [[What Have I Done|
** Also "Take responsibility for what you create."
** "Projecting things onto your children is wrong."
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** "Men should not eliminate women from the [[Women Are Wiser|process of creating life]]." - Mary Shelley's mother was essentially the grandmother of feminism, and unlike some movements within 20th-century feminism, 19th-century feminism believed women should have a public voice ''because'' they were different from men.
* ''[[On the Beach]]'', by Nevil Shute. Oh my God, ''[[On the Beach]]''... Noted how ''[[Threads]]'' and other films depicting horrors of nuclear holocaust in the film section of this page demand strong nerves from the viewer? Well, compared to this book (and the films of it), they are ''downright optimistic''. As one critic said: "Most novels of apocalypse posit at least a group of survivors and the semblance of hope. ''[[On the Beach]]'' allows nothing of the kind." You don't get any less subtle in telling exactly what an all-out nuclear war might mean for humanity.
* In ''[[The Saint]] in New York'', a
* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' has many examples of these. The best may be the lines '"Bread!" boomed a man behind her. "We want bread, bastard!" In a heartbeat, a thousand voices took up the chant. King Joffrey and King Robb and King Stannis were forgotten, and King Bread ruled alone.'
** Also the [[Shell-Shocked Veteran|broken men]] in ''A Feast for Crows''.
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* ''[[Jennifer Government]]'' is set in a world where the government has very little power at all, but it's as [[Dystopia|dystopic]] as ''1984'' and ''Brave New World'': a girl gets killed in order to increase the street cred for some new shoes, 911 won't send an ambulance unless they can confirm whether the girl can afford it, and the government can barely afford to bring those responsible to justice. Basically, "unchecked capitalism is very bad."
* ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]'' is a [[Deconstruction]] of the Marxist slogan “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. In story, this takes the form of the 20th Century Motor Company which functions as a microcosm of a communist police state, such as the Soviet Union (which Rand fled from after her family’s business was seized by the new communist government).
** In the story, we are also constantly reminded that the government has the privilege of a monopoly on force (something which is ''always'' overlooked in works like ''[[Jennifer Government]]''), which private citizens and corporations lack, and so “political power” is the power to use force while “economic power” is the power to produce.
* The main, undisguised message of [[Jane Austen]]'s novel ''[[Emma]]'' is about the evils, dangers, and folly of a practice we now know as [[Shipping]].<ref>Called "matchmaking" in Austen's day, and "lovering" in ''[[Little Women]]''.</ref> If there was ''ever'' an anvil that ''desperately'' needed to be dropped...
* ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' on the [[Power of Love]]. Not only is it a message that seems to be lost all too often (seriously, look up how many fanfictions there are about how Harry ought to have been a dark vigilante who beat up the Dursleys and trusted no one), Rowling puts far more emphasis on how important the love of family and friends are instead of love interests. Seriously, how often does ''that'' happen?
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* [[David Gemmell]]: All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
* [[Tess of the D'Urbervilles]]: Yes, the book is incredibly depressing, leading the main character from one bad situation to an even worse ones. But, at its time, it was very different and controversial, making the main character, who wasn't a virgin via rape, very sympathetic and, ultimately, more morally good than many of the other supposedly "pure" and pious characters rather than some harlot that the society of the time would have deemed her.
* Chris Crutcher's young adult novels (''Running Loose, Stotan!, The Crazy Horse Electric Game, Chinese Handcuffs, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, Ironman, Whale Talk, The Sledding Hill'', and ''Deadline'') all drop anvils, but
* H. Beam Piper's "Day of the Moron" delvers its message with all the grace and aplomb of a Thor strike: In fields that require educated, thoughtful workers, with the potential for loss of human life in the event of accident or carelessness, ignorance and thoughtlessness absolutely must not be tolerated in any degree.
* ''Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day'' features the titular ten-year-old character having the "worst day of his life", though most of what happens are petty things like getting gum in his hair, not getting a window seat in the car, and not finding a prize in his cereal box. He get so frustrated that he wants to run away to Australia, but his mom tells him that everyone has bad days, even in Australia. In short: shit happens; deal with it.
* ''[[The Lottery]]'' shows us that just because something is "tradition" does ''not'' automatically make it good and right.
* In ''[[The Lovely Bones]]'', the main character is Susie Salmon, a young girl who was raped and murdered. Posthumously, she longs to have her life back. It isn't until she and her family accept things as they are that they can finally live in peace again. It really drives home the aesop that bad things will happen to you, but you must come to terms that it happened, and you must carry on as best you can, live in the moment, and don't dwell on past grievances.
* John Wyndham's ''[[The Chrysalids]]'' has some pretty non-subtle messages about nuclear war, and religious intolerance too. Most of his other books are quite damning of humanity's mob mentality, and how clever people can band together to become a stupid collective. Very much a "think for yourself" message.
* Mark Twain's "[https://web.archive.org/web/20160313124703/http://www.ntua.gr/lurk/making/warprayer.html The War Prayer]" slams home the undiscussed side of war ''hard''. But the real [[Aesop]], what makes it work, is how willingly people ignore the obvious because it doesn't fit in with their world view.
▲* Terry Pratchett's early Discworld novel ''Small Gods'' deals with the difference between believing in God and believing in church. The only character who still believes in Om at the novel's start is a naive young boy, while His church controls an entire nation. The anvil is illustrated in the comparison between simple, honest Brutha and [[Knight Templar]] Deacon Vorbis, who is ready to incite holy war with anyone and everyone, despite the fact that Om Himself states point blank that holy war was never His intention, even more so in the distant future of the ending: {{spoiler|Vorbis dies when Brutha is just a boy, but without his "belief" to guide him, waits between the land of the living and the dead for nearly a century, until Brutha also dies and leads him to the afterlife.}} The overarching message seems to be that if one twists religious scripture to suit one's own selfish desire, it becomes a completely different body of work.
* ''[[Slaughterhouse-Five]]'' by [[Kurt Vonnegut]] drops the [[War Is Hell]] anvil about once a page or so. It also really, really wants to the reader to know that [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing|enjoying (even vicariously) or glorifying war is foolish and wrong]]:
{{quote|''I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.''
''I have also told them not to work for companies that make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.'' }}
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