Monthly Archives: October 2015

Boehner’s Monkey and Ellison’s Sambo

By Robin Bates | Published: October 11, 2015

Speaker John Boehner may keep a wind-up monkey to express how he feels jerked around by the rightwing Freedom Caucus, which prompted him to resign. There is a similar puppet in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” also signifying emasculation and humiliation.

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My Cries Cannot Pierce Thy Silent Ears

By Robin Bates | Published: October 10, 2015

George Herbert poetry is admirable in the way he wrestles with his spiritual doubts. He may owe a debt to “The Book of Job,” where we also see such wrestling.

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John Lennon’s Utopian Vision

By Robin Bates | Published: October 8, 2015

John Lennon would turn 75 today. “Imagine” lives on, an instance of utopian thinking that challenges us to look around us.

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Hillary before Judges Like Tolstoy’s Pierre

By Robin Bates | Published: October 7, 2015

The Congressional Committee to Investigate Benghazi is like the military tribunal in “War and Peace” that questions Pierre. It is interested only in answers to lead to conviction.

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Misusing Metaphor in the Abortion Debates

By Robin Bates | Published: October 6, 2015

Both sides are misusing metaphor in the abortion debates. If we want a deeper vision of reality, we must turn to literature.

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Bernie, Black Lives Matter, & Invisible Man

By Robin Bates | Published: October 5, 2015

Bernie Sanders’s early missteps with Black Lives Matter, which bewildered him and his followers, is explained in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.”

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Tolstoy Calls Us to Aid Syrian Refugees

By Robin Bates | Published: October 4, 2015

During the evacuation of Moscow in “War and Peace,” the Rostov family gives up their worldly goods to help soldiers in distress. This is much more than many in the U.S. are willing to do for Syrian refugees.

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Thee Thyself We Cannot Lose

By Robin Bates | Published: October 3, 2015

In a powerful four-line poem, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge sums up the main lesson in the Book of Job: even when we suffer, we still have God.

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This Time Grendel Chose Umpqua

By Robin Bates | Published: October 1, 2015

Every time there is another mass killing, this time at Umpqua Community College, I turn to “Beowulf.” Few works understand such violence as well as this medieval Anglo-Saxon epic.

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