Contradictions

"Contradictions" by Debbie Grayson Lincoln.
Funny, my five year old said, "It looks like the American Flag!"

In life, contradictions are inevitable, and life is reflected in the written word. Part of the greatness of literature is the ability to observe people, history and ideas through a magnifying glass, viewing the lives of others through their own eyes. In  our books, we find evidence of contradictions between the words and the lives of our literary ancestors in America. 

We see this contradiction in the life of Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved proclaimer of freedom and boaster in the glory of America's "goddess [. . .] divinely fair [with] olive and laurel bind[ing] her golden hair." Wheatley was a woman who would only know the harsh reality of poverty after her freedom was granted. Her life, in a way, contradicted the fate of a slave in her time. In class, someone said it doesn't matter that Wheatley was a slave-to me, her position in life is what made her poem to Washington such a novelty. 

 Ben Franklin, an admitted walking contradiction in his own right, spoke of the virtue of chastity. "Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation." In the end, his reputation follows him as a notorious flirt and womanizer. It isn't proven that he actually was unfaithful or promiscuous, but you have to chuckle at the fact that his reputation was arguably injured in this area

There are many other examples of the contradictions between early American writers and their own lives or societies. We can easily find the irony in John Winthrop's message of love and service to one another, contrasted with the brutality and arguably hateful nature of his colony. Another example is Anne Bradstreet, so contradictory that our lessons were focused on her "many voices." 

What about these contradictions? Do they invalidate the writer? I like to think these ironies bring the humanity of the writer to the surface. They make the writing all the more interesting for its inconsistency-whether with itself or with the life of the penman. I can't help but think of the words we read in "Self-Reliance." 

With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.