Et tu Brute?

So I was helping my brother write a paper the other day. He's a Sophomore in high school and his assignment was to compare the accounts of the assassination of Julius Caesar as told by Shakespeare and Plutarch. My brother then listed a series of differences and similarities between the two accounts. Not knowing how to sum up in a good conclusion, I suggested that he pick which one tells the story better and to say why that person gives a better account. Through a series of questions and forcing him to think about this he came to the same conclusion I did (surprise): Shakespeare tells the story better.

There is nothing on this earth that is quite like a story well told. There's something captivating about picking up a walking stick and sneaking through forests with Bilbo and the dwarfs. There's something fascinating about the mental explosion that occurs in the dining car on the Orient Express trying to figure out who stabbed the dead man. We lose our breath but never tire of chasing Huck and Jim down the Mississip. The intrigue that we feel when the great lion finally appears just when the children are at their last moments, is sometimes too much to bear. Somehow in the back of our minds, we know everything is going to be OK in the end, but we don't know how, or when, or why. Some heroes lose their life on the way, Gandalf the Grey in the mines, Susan Pevensie who will never return to the beloved lands, the great warrior Patroklos. In these great stories, we laugh, we cry (at least the tears drip down our souls if not our cheeks), we think, we hope, and it ends.

That is why History is so frightfully boring to me and I've never taken to it. Because no matter how good of a historian you are, you will never capture or draw the reader (at least me) into the minds, hearts, hopes, and fears of characters involved. History will never let me experience the sadness and doubt that accompanied the separation of Merry and Pippin at Rohan. Yes, I know. The quest to destroy the ring and save Middle Earth is not a real story... but it represents real feelings and real courage and heroism and love of good which are real.

Julius Caesar as told by Shakespeare includes us in the inner conflict of men, the citizens of Rome. Shakespeare does not tell you what side to be on, he shows you the intentions and motives, the behind the scenes, the wives, the resulting fissures, all told in the most beautiful of words. That way we can actually experience conviction one way or the other when the temptation to overthrow a tyrant for the sake of the greater good arises. I don't know one history textbook that has ever moved me. Dates, times, places, endless names that I cannot remember, events of some great splendor that I don't even understand because I'm too busy trying to remember who is who. It's all very distasteful after a while and yet... it must be taught and it must be learned. Bummer.