Children, hitmen and bad words...

 

The Killers, by Ernest Hemingway, is a 1927 short story where two men in black enter a diner demanding a meal and end up tying up the cook and a waiter and let slip that they’re waiting for Ole Anderson whom they will be killing for a friend when he comes in for his usual supper at six o’clock. The story is told almost entirely through dialogue and is reflective of Hemingway’s philosophy that like an iceberg, a story shows the “visible” to the reader and the meat and meaning lies underwater, in the imagination and the contemplation of the reader. (My description of his ”Iceberg theory of the short story.”)

I hadn’t read the story for years, but my curiosity was piqued by a CBC report that education administration in Nova Scotia had judged that the story didn’t have enough merit to justify the inclusion of the dozen or so times that the killers refer to the cook as “the n****r.” I reread The Killers and, sure enough, the complainants’ count proved to be accurate. The story was removed from the Grade 12 optional reading list because the word “n****r” appeared 12 times, presumably without asterisks.

As a former high school English teacher, I’ve learned that when individual parental objections to literature arise, applying the simple “reasons to ban” or “reasons to avoid the banning option” can seldom help to bring parent and school to an amicable understanding. So, when a conservative Christian parent railed against my “forcing” his son to study Lord of the Flies with all its swearing, I didn’t debate with her the literary necessity for verisimilitude. I gave him Watership Down and spent a few hours writing a study guide for him that would only be used the once.

African Americans and Canadians have born the sting of the N word as a demeaning pejorative for so long, a complaint coming from a black parent must surely trigger empathy and a response that respects the dignity of a complainant, mustn’t it?  

The world of language and literary education can do well without The Killers. It could probably prosper without Shylock, the stereotyped Jewish-lender in The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare, or “N****r Jim” in Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. But an inherent problem in burying the offensive in our literature is obvious in a multicultural world, where sauce for the goose can’t be guaranteed to be sauce for the gander.

In a successful democracy, a universal education is an absolute necessity. In Canada, education is broadly administered by the provinces, and more regionally adapted by local boards. Striving for the kind of education that enables citizens to exercise their franchise knowledgeably is virtually the same from coast to coast. Allowance is made for separate schools where religious faiths and cultural communities can add parochial curricula to the public. The tension arises when private interests lobby to steer public education to suit their preferences. The disasters happen when governance acquiesces to cultural, religious or political pressure by a minority… without formulating policy inside the boundaries of the national interest.

I consider The Killers an excellent resource for teaching and learning both creative writing and social mores. The cook in the story is only “n****r” to the two gunmen; to the manager and the waiter, he’s “Sam.” For those protesting the story for the 12 occurrences of the pejorative, might it not be considered an opportunity for discussing and learning about the dynamics of racism and prejudice? Or is the fear that seeing the 12 occurrences in the story will reinforce racism in Grade 12 students?

From a writer’s point of view, substituting a different word (say, “the cook”) would change the entire import of the story. The killers are evil; to soften them softens the drama that really begins with demeaning the character of the manager and the waiter.

Meanwhile, the target of the killers’ hunt languishing in a lonely room, waiting for his inevitable end opens another avenue for discussion of existential questions with which students will be wrestling for the rest of their lives. Good education makes judgments about learning readiness, but doesn’t cut the frightening and the unpleasant out of students’ experience in the interest of present comfort; the object of education is to prepare them for adult life as it is, not as we wish it were.

The model of delivering education is, by now, very old, almost archaic when considering the expectations placed upon it: 25 students being talked to simultaneously by one adult on a schedule of 45 minutes each for Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, Health, Arithmetic, Physical Education, or something similar. A major insight was added in the 20^th Century, namely individualization of teaching approaches suited to individual learning strengths and weaknesses. The addition of a few teacher aides wasn’t nearly enough to make that 1 to 25 ratio manageable. Imagine individualizing for parental preferences additional to all the other demands of teachers, without altering the system accordingly.

Do read The Killers for yourself at The-Killer-Pdf.pdf (SECURED) and comment if you like to gg.epp41@gmail.com.

NAICA (No AI content or assistance.)