James Week 14: Stories Shape History

Reading my last blog, you may believe I am heartless. How could I not mourn the death of a family member, even if I never met them?

Maybe you are callous too.

Do you pity your ancestors? Your great-great-great grandparents, lost in the folds of history? Have you ever tried to find out who they were? Did you try to find their stories? Did you mourn them? I doubt any of us have.

History is emotionless, unloving. Death tolls are mere numbers on a page—nothing more. You too will eventually fade into history, as will the people you love, until every trace of your existence lies forgotten, buried by dust and ash. 

So why do we sympathize with people long dead? “Sixty Million and more” is but a figure, yet still we feel sorrow for the slaves. Why do we grieve those who died in the Holocaust, yet few remember the thousands of Romans who fell at Cannae?

The answer lies in literature.  

Toni Morrison tries to find humanity in history—telling individual stories that make history come to life on an individual scale, making people truly understand the pain behind the numbers. It is because of stories like

Beloved that we sympathize with those who were slaves, those we never knew. It is because of these stories that we understand many aspects history at an individual level. 

However, literature can both evince and obscure history.

It’s easy to portray historical figures as purely evil. The Spanish conquistadores. Southern slave owners. Hitler. Surely they lacked even a shred of goodness; surely they were solely driven by the need to make others suffer.

Germany's oil needs played a greater role than ideological 
differences in the invasion of the USSR. Source: Extra Credits
Yet focusing on evil can blind us to truth. Some believe that Hitler invaded the USSR out of pure hatred for communism. Others believe that he was motivated by a drive for Lebensraum—living space for the German people. Still others believe that he sought to destroy the millions of Jews living in Russia at the time. Are these historical perspectives wrong? No, Hitler certainly hated communism and Jews. Are they misleading? Perhaps. 

A much larger factor behind the invasion of the USSR was Germany’s oil shortage at the time—a shortage that Hitler wanted to solve by seizing the vast oil deposits in Russia. But this story isn’t nearly as interesting—it’s much easier to say that Hitler was solely driven by his fanaticism for Lebensraum, by his hatred of communism, by his evil plan to destroy the Jews. 

Few stories accurately portray the true motivations behind the “bad guys,” which—though controversial—are necessary in understanding history. Stories of people in suffering have the power to make history clearer, but the villains in these stories may play an equal role in obscuring truth.

Comments

  1. Tanishka NathApril 7, 2025 at 12:48 PM

    Hi James, your blog today was quite interesting, and really opened my mind to a topic I haven’t really thought about in the folds of history. Although it is definitely easy to portray the bad guys as entirely evil, most of the time, the full story is not told due to the public portrayal of the truth. The content of your blog is quite deep and delves into many things, and you were correct in the claim that history is truly emotionless at its core, so many lives are unable to be preserved due to the sheer mass of brutality and violence that occurs over time. The connection between this topic and Beloved is quite valuable in seeing a counterattack to this issue, showcasing how Toni Morrison helps to tell individual stories and give them the value and recognition they deserve. Bringing these situations to life is vital for learning the true history of the world, and banning books like Beloved paints a perfect picture, which is pretty much fake. Your blog was quite insightful, good job!

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  2. Arnav KheniApril 9, 2025 at 9:46 PM

    Hi James. I do not think you are heartless. Also, I find this blog interesting as it makes me think about something I have never really gone into before. I have never really thought that much about how literature is the only thing that really makes us care about the dead. Like I myself have never really thought about my ancestors as there was nothing about them or their deaths for me to connect with. Although on a side note, I think verbal stories should be added as they do not fall under literature, but they can equally hold as much power as they are passed down from generation to generation. Anyway, I have thought about your overarching idea that literature defines our public perception of the people from the past. It is like they say, history is written by the victors. So in our modified history, our sympathies are usually meant to be given to the victor, which often makes me wonder and nowadays delve into if all our heroes deserve our sympathy. Of course I do not doubt that people like Hitler deserve to be disdained, as his crimes are unjustifiable in any angle. And having a racist politician in the city he was raised in was nowhere near good enough justification. However, I sometimes wonder how history would try to portray him as good if he had won. Overall, this was a very thought provoking blog.

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  3. Emily UngApril 14, 2025 at 5:11 PM

    Hey James! I totally agree with you on this blog, especially as we’ve had similar experiences with grieving family members. It’s definitely hard to mourn someone you’ve never met or barely knew, especially when you don’t feel as obligated to compared to how a closer relative would. It doesn’t make you heartless, it just makes you more understandable. I like that you brought up literature being the reason behind how we remember the individuals that have lived before us, without actually knowing them. It’s a great way to learn about people who lived influential lives and even those that lived more simply. Personally, I would appreciate if I could find some sort of writing about my ancestors or even great grandparents who’ve already passed on, but unfortunately it’s extremely difficult to as they has to leave a lot of their belongings behind when moving countries. It makes me wonder what they were like when they were alive, and the history behind their lives.

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