Beautiful Writing.

The poem is very beautifully written.  The rhythm of the poetry, the richness of the language, the way the author uses language to create feeling for the listener as he tells the story… it is very well done.

History.

The history in this tale is very interesting, and I think it may have been referenced by the founding fathers of the United States in the Declaration of Independence (the actual history, not Longfellow’s historical fiction).  It is worthwhile to learn the story of the Acadians, later called the Cajuns.  It certainly sheds light on the sort of nation (Great Britain) with which the American colonists were forced to sever ties.

Very Sweet and Wholesome.

Almost the entire book is wholesome and sweet.  So most Christians think this is a lovely example of good literature.

Similar books: Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Tom Sawyer; the poetry of William Blake (as “The Lamb” and “The Tyger”), Emily Dickinson, etc.

Romanticism.

But there is a very big problem—this book is written in the Romantic worldview.  The Romantic worldview hearkens back to the pagan Romans.  Instead of the Christian worldview, in which we are taught to take our thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ, and seek truth above all—which is always rational—, the Romantic worldview emphasizes feelings.  For example, love is not a command to be obeyed, but instead a sort of pitfall one “falls” into.  It cannot be helped or controlled whom one loves; the feelings are the supreme arbiters of right and wrong.

Hence, though Evangeline and Gabriel are parted, Evangeline is right to waste her entire life trying to find her youthful love again.  The Bible says that she should settle down and get married, if God provides that opportunity.  But in the Romantic worldview, feelings—especially tragic feelings that will only lead to sorrow—must be obeyed.  Notice that Gabriel never searches for Evangeline.  Longfellow closes the story by giving Evangeline a bittersweet satisfaction, but without any of the joy and fulfillment she’d been longing for all her years.

Greek Tragedy.

In The History of the World MegaConference, which I highly recommend, one of the lecturers teaches about the influence of Greek Tragedy on our modern society, and this is the form you see in Longfellow’s Evangeline.  Just like in Romeo and Juliet, there is a prophecy early in the tale portending doom to the “star-crossed lovers”, and no matter how they try to overcome their doom—and especially as a result of their efforts to avoid their doom—the doom still comes, to their sorrow.

The Greek Tragedy is softened by a bit of Christian Worldview in Longfellow.  For example, in the pagan writings (and in Shakespeare), there will always be a witch (oracle, prophecy, etc.) at the beginning of the tale who foretells the doom which will occur to the protagonist. In Longfellow, he does not use such a heathen device in his storytelling—his writings would have been utterly rejected by the pious Christian readership of the United States if he had!  Instead, Evangeline’s heart tells her that her quest will end in failure.  But this is still the Greek tragedy form.  Another example of how Longfellow softened the Greek tragedy form is that he has the characters participate in Christian religion, and the gods who are directing the action are supposedly the one true God.  But again, the true God does not operate like the pagan Greek gods—capriciously causing trouble and disorder to no higher purpose.

On the other hand, if John Bunyan had written this, I imagine Evangeline would have mourned her loss, prayed for wisdom, listened to the Bible about how young widows should remarry, and happily received a suitable marriage proposal in due time.  She would have borne children and lived to see her grandchildren.  Though she had suffered wrong at the hands of wicked men, she would have found that God brought greater joy to her, even through the suffering.

But in the Greek tragedy, the sufferer just goes on suffering, and the only end is death.

Religion.

Speaking of a false god being called the Living and True God…  The priest is supposed to stand as the voice of God for Evangeline.  When the priest speaks, that is the counsel of God to her.

The only problem is that practically everything the priest says is wrong!  The very worst is the heart of the book, in Part the Second, Canto I:

Here is the substance of Longfellow’s message, at the center of the book; it is the message of virtually all of the 19th century Romantic authors and poets—that the heart, and not the Bible, should rule our lives.

The heart!

“The heart is deceitful and wicked above all things.”

These books have a beautiful cover on them of innocence—by portraying innocent characters who only act according to kindness and goodness.  These books have a wholesome cover on them of sweetness—by picturing Christian communities living in harmony, industry, and faith.  But the heart of these books is well-hid, and at the heart these “good” books teach the most deceitful of lessons, while feigning to teach Christian truth.

Follow Thy Heart.

Another example, from Part the Second, Canto I:

And in Part the Second, Canto II, Father Felician says,

So now you know that our Christian culture has been subtly being trained in the satanic dogma of follow your heart for two hundred years. This is a prime example of the literature of the 19th century, which not only had a big impact on the 1800s, but has been taught to generation after generation ever since.  Christian educators today trust to their own training, so they teach these books to the next generation, calling them good and beautiful.

Names.

We’ll say a bit more about this below, but for now notice that Father Felician is the father figure to Evangeline, and the voice of God to Evangeline, and his name is that of happiness (felicity).  He is the one to guide Evangeline to happiness.  And he is the one who consistently counsels Evangeline to obey her feelings and the voice of her heart.

Her feelings, and her heart, will lead her to happiness.

Transcendentalism.

Transcendentalism was the fashionable false religion of intellectual northerners in the United States in the mid-1800s.  Many of the authors featured in typical curriculums (yes, even the Christian curriculums) were Transcendentalists.  Compared to the crazy post-Christian ideas of today, the Transcendentalists seem very sweet and Christian.  But they were absolutely rejecting the one true God.

They would speak of “God”, but their god was not the Triune Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  They had some idea of right and wrong, but their ideas of right and wrong were defined by their hearts, and certainly not the Bible.  They would write books in which the characters went to church and performed Christian duties of piety toward God and virtue toward their fellow man, but the actual Christian God actually didn’t exist in the “universe” of their books; the “God” in these books was only a friendly sort of fairy godmother who might or might not exist—he existed as far as it enabled the characters to display their goodness by showing piety toward him, but he never took action in the story.

When reading a book, you should always ask, “In this story the author has created, does God exist?  Is He ruling?  Is He righting wrongs?  When the characters die, will they immediately stand at the judgment seat of Christ, at which an eternity of either heaven or hell awaits?  Does God actively work in this story?”

Most of the books you find—most of the books in literature courses, yes, in the Christian curricula, too—are written in such a way that the author has created a world after his (or her) own liking—a world that looks just like our world, except that it is exactly the way the atheistic author wants to pretend our world is—it is a world in which we do not have to answer to our Creator, because the true God does not exist.

In these books, the goal of the characters is self-fulfillment or self-discovery.  Even if the characters serve others, it is only to demonstrate how good and worthy this character is, and not because our God loved us so much that He served us—even to the death of the cross—and therefore we serve others out of love for the God who loved us so much, though we are absolutely unworthy of His love.

Evangeline.

Finally, notice Evangeline’s name.  Just like the masculine version, Evangel, Evangeline means bringer of the gospel.

What gospel is Evangeline bringing to Longfellow’s readers?

Just an Introduction.

As a student and young adult, I spent twenty years reading books like this.  Compared to the darker “classics” we were told to read, such as The Red Badge of Courage, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Where the Red Fern Grows, White Fang; then the Brontë sisters, Edgar Allen Poe, and F. Scott Fitzgerald; and then Faulkner, Hemingway, and Salinger; not to mention all of the poets like Dickinson, Frost, Burke, Wordsworth, Yeats, Keats… And don’t even get me started on The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter!  I could go on and on…  Compared to the darker “classics” we were given to read, Evangeline seems wonderfully sweet and Christian.  Yet it plainly teaches students to believe that their feelings are the ultimate authority they must obey—without the students ever realizing they are being taught this!

These authors, so familiar to Christian curriculum literature lists, either hint that God isn’t real, simply ignore Him and act like He isn’t real, or outright deny that He is real.

These are not the ideas that help us.  In any way.

Reading Evangeline is a great discernment exercise, but also an example to show us why the literary education in Grammar of Grace and Christian Trivium Publishing is so radically different from (probably) what most of your friends are giving to their children.  This is not to puff us up with pride, or to make us think that leading our children to Christ will be a cinch—no, I’m afraid the danger lies within our children’s very hearts, and we must diligently teach our children about the Lord, and pray earnestly for the Holy Spirit to do the work we cannot.

But I hope this exercise might provide you with some solid evidence, and some encouragement, for those of us who are attempting to do something radically different—something hard!—in our age.

Oh, may the Lord help each of us to in our efforts to “teach them diligently”!

Thanks for dropping by; please keep us in prayer!