Lies My Teacher Told Me Analysis

The book, Burn this book Pen Writers Speak Out On The Power Of The Word, edited by Toni Morrison, is a highly interesting and revealing book. The essay titled, “Notes on Literature and Engagement” by Russell Banks is an interesting one. This essay is about the effects of novels on society and how some literary artists who write protest novels ignore the real purpose of a novel. This essay relates to a novel I read titled, Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen which, according to this chapter is referred to as a protest novel. Firstly, the author of the essay, Russell Banks, greatly opposes the concept of protest novels. He doesn't refer to them as works of art. He surmises that they are “an argument disguised as a story” (Banks, 57).
In other words, they don’t entertain us, instead they try to convince people about a certain issue. The book, Lies my Teacher told me, is an argument as well. The argument in the book is that history textbooks should tell the real story of the history of America. It is an interesting book, but it is not to be referred to as a novel because its purpose isn’t to entertain us or expose our identity, but instead it is to foster change in the world. Banks refers to the people who write protest novels as public intellectuals, instead of novelists. These people aim to cause a change in the world with their words. Russell Banks believes that the change caused by protest novels aren’t really significant and are mostly specific. Also, Banks writes about how not a lot of literary artists write protest novels. He says, “Perhaps the reason so few literary artists try to write protest novels is that they feel it’s simply not their job to foster change in the larger world, at least not by means of their literary works” (Banks 57). To put it in another way, a lot of literary artist don’t write protest novels because changing the world is not supposed to be the main purpose of a novel. Secondly, Russell Banks talks about how protest novels often have an audience which is correct in the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me. The audience is loud and clear. The author refers to the audience, students and important figures in the educational system, throughout the book
However, Banks surmises that “[a] true novelist, that is to say, one who aspires to create a work of narrative art, has no thought of his or her audience. At least not when he or she is a novelist writing” (Banks 56). In other words, a true novelist should not even think about the audience when writing a novel because doing so would bring about judgement or bias in the story. Thirdly, A true novelist, according to Russell Banks, writes to enrich himself and understand what is known as mystery to them. The author of the book, James W. Loewen, however, is successful in this part. His book seemed like a learning process for both him and his audience. It was possible to feel his own shock from reading it. Furthermore, Banks say, “The fact is, the novelist speaks for no one but himself or herself and writes solely to penetrate what would otherwise remain mysterious to him, morally or metaphysically or socially” (Banks 52). To put it differently, A true novelist is supposed to learn from his work and figure out what used to be a mytsery to him or her. Finally this essay, “Notes on Literature and Engagement” is very interesting. It relates greatly to the book, “Lies My teacher Told Me” because the essay elaborates on protest novels and this book is a protest novel. It was like this essay was written for this book. Also, it is always very interesting and important to be able to make connections with different texts.