By Dylan Nice
July 3rd, 2012
“Freshman year of college I was a Republican hardliner and Pentecostal Christian. I had just graduated from an Appalachian public school where you could sometimes find teachers’ names written inside a textbook cover under the heading “issued to.” I had spent much of my childhood in backwoods revival services, in evangelical youth groups, trips to praise and worship services in stadium-sized venues. I called global warming a hoax and Al Gore a baby killer. I had come down out of the mountains with a wad of snuff in my lip and driving a high-mileage Ford. Somehow, I believed I would be a writer—not just a writer, but one who felt he’d saved himself from falling victim to lies through an uncomplicated narrative of persistent belief. I sensed truth was a fragile thing and once found, could only be kept alive through abidance. I was certain the new Iraqi war and all that ugliness could only be lost if we decided we wanted to lose it.
I had been rejected from the University of Pittsburgh but allowed to attend one of its satellite campuses in a suburb an hour outside the city. The campus had two classroom buildings that were situated along what brochures called a “creek” but was instantly recognized by all as a crick. It was clogged with fallen tree limbs and tires. Most of the sixteen hundred students commuted from the city, but some five hundred lived on campus. The dorms were a brick apartment complex formerly used as low-income housing. The walls were patched, the door knobs broken, the concrete floors poured unevenly. I started arguments with the Pittsburgh kids, legacy democrats, and was not well liked. Outside for a cigarette I asked them for a light then attacked them ad hominem the first chance I got. Democrats distributed wealth, which was socialism, and the difference between socialism and communism was so slight to be negligible. I regarded anyone who disparaged the Bush administration or the war on terror as a coward and a fool. America and Christianity were narratives of faith and strength and I could not tolerate unbelief.
Based on my entrance exam scores, my advisor registered me for a math class that was too basic to count for college credit and a remedial English composition course. The composition course consisted of learning the difference between dependent and independent clauses and how you could connect them. The instructor was thorough with drafts, but I found his lectures and assigned readings to be overtly political. He seemed to me to be a member of a large group of Americans who were impotent and angry because they had lost the argument. Their vision of peace had been a delusion, a fantasy. It was 2004 and we no longer lived in the cushy Clinton years, we lived in the valley of the shadow of death.
I wrote earnest essays. My drafts were returned with comma splices circled and frustrated marginalia which advised that I consider my topics more slowly. I knew to be suspicious of the academy and the people it housed, but I also had to acknowledge the instructor, pro-America or not, knew a good deal more about writing than I did. And for reasons I couldn’t explain, I wanted very badly to be good at writing. It had something to do with the size of the world and how it thrilled me. There was a big narrative going on out there: tanks were running fast through the desert, G.I.s were marching bearded men across the sand at gunpoint, our president was evoking the name of God. The world had become clear and palpable. There was a battle between the righteous and the deceived. I understood the truth and wanted to be able to stir the hearts of men with it.
The task, it seemed, was learning where the commas went. Early that October, my instructor assigned George Orwell’s essay “Shooting an Elephant.” I waited till Saturday to do my work, when the Pittsburgh kids had gone back to Penn Hills or North hills for the weekend and it was quiet. It was a warm day that was just going to dusk. At the open kitchen window, I sat down to read through the essay. Orwell’s circumstances confused me at first. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that British occupied foreign lands into the 20th century, or that they had been in Burma. Or that there had been a place called Burma. I didn’t know about British India and had never seen the word Raj before. If asked, I would have been hard pressed to provide an accurate definition of imperialism. This is to say that it was news to me that changing a nation’s government and culture through military force wasn’t at all a new idea.
I continued. The essay was narrative: the story of …
Completion of this essay highly recommended – Go to:
Truth in Nonfiction: A Testimonial
By Dylan Nice
July 3rd, 2012
Although on the other side of the Pond, I have struggled with these issues because I listen to Christian television where so often things that are true and important are laced with this truly terrible political and social prejudice.
Sharmishtha Basu
July 7, 2012
i have seen a movie based on orwell’s animal farm, its amazing. just amazing. he is an amazing writer if thats his standard writing.
johndwm
July 7, 2012
Yes , 1984 is the hardest hitting and much has come true around the world. Well worth a read, as are his essays! He also faught the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. I havent yet read Homage to Catalonia which was about his experiences there!