A few thoughts

On the alphabet and tragic fiction

By Sandy Compton
Reader Columnist

About 3,800 years ago, just over 1% of the time that modern humans have been around, the Babylonian King Hammurabi ordered the creation of the first written laws to protect order in his realm — and to keep himself and his family in power. 

Symbols used to incise his laws into clay tablets were wedge-shaped impressions arranged in patterns to signify words. This writing system had been created by merchants and traders to keep track of business, and came to be called “cuneiform” by latter-day archaeologists, after the Latin word cuneus, “wedge.” Cuneiform was hard to learn. Not many knew how to write with it or translate it. Meanwhile, Egyptians of that era adopted a modified form of hieroglyphs to record things. Not many knew how to write or translate that, either.

About the time Hammurabi published his code, though, a different writing system appeared in Sumer in the Middle East that became the basis of Hebrew and Arabic writing. It used a smallish number of symbols representing sounds that can be made with human lips, tongue, teeth, breath and vocal cords. It was easy to learn and, once learned, easy to write and read.  

Early in the first millennium B.C.E., the Greeks refined the system into what eventually became the alphabets, of which there are several. The Greeks settled on 24 symbols, many of which are still used in one form or another. Almost anyone could learn to translate combinations of those symbols into words. Almost anyone could learn to inscribe those symbols onto some sort of medium — papyrus, parchment, vellum, clay, stone — making words that could be read and understood by anyone who knew the system at any time. 

Literature was born, and the Greeks dove headlong into it, writing scores of stories about imagined warriors and explorers, often interwoven with tales of the pantheon, their assortment of gods and goddesses, who, in these complete fabrications, could not get along with each other or the mortals who paid homage to them. “Gruesome” is an understatement when it comes to many fictions the Greeks created, including the “classics” college students are encouraged to suffer in their studies. These casts of characters, divine and not, were forever killing, maiming, torturing and betraying each other, human and god/goddess alike. 

Within 500 years of developing the alphabet, Greek writers had perfected a genre of fiction that features incest, infidelity, betrayal, treachery, torture, cannibalism, patricide, matricide, filicide and every other variety of murder by every conceivable means, many of which were quite messy (even though firearms hadn’t been invented yet). 

They established tragedy as a standard format, and that format has followed literature through the ensuing 25 centuries. 

I recently finished a “critically acclaimed” work of fiction — I’m not naming names — which was beautifully written, compelling and exciting, with great characterization and an awesome story line. Six pages from the end, the author killed the protagonist. Note that I am not saying that the protagonist got killed or died. The author killed him. 

The killing seemed to be for the sole purpose of shocking and disappointing the reader, all the while adding an “Oh, my God!” poignancy regarding the protagonist’s survivors, most of whom are never mentioned again. 

I lost respect for the writer. The book could have ended very nicely had the hero lived to enjoy the benefits of the travails he had suffered to get six pages from the end. It still would have been a beautiful, dynamite read. It still would have been highly entertaining. And a better book. The hero’s death seemed a somewhat sadistic device designed to twist the readers’ guts. It did not serve justice. There was no logical reason for it, except to add tragedy. 

I am not a big fan of tragedy. It seems to sell, but I have this odd idea that artists of all media are responsible for the imagery they introduce to the universe. We have way too much weirdness and violence in our world already. It seems counterproductive to add more. 

I often wonder how different our world might be if the Greeks had not imagined their deities as arrogant, untrustworthy and viciously cruel and made their heroes kinder and their fictions more about the lives of humans who were humane. 

In our modern world, a great majority of humans (88%) know how to read and write. We are still creating mythic worlds and stories, many with tragic endings, but others that are happier. It’s hard to separate fiction from reality and know who’s telling the truth in business and politics. But a growing majority are beginning to see though the fictions presented by Donnie Boy and his minions, which I think isn’t tragic at all. Go vote. 

Sandy Compton writes books with mostly happy endings and tries to leave chances for redemption for almost all of his characters. Find them at Sandpoint Books, the Sanders County Ledger, bluecreekpress.com and amazon.com.