Taylor Essay Award Winners

Every semester Ashbrook Scholars compete in an essay writing competition.  Authors chose their own topics and a first draft is critiqued in a writing seminar; winners are chosen from the revised versions.  Below are the winners from the FA 2017 competition.  Congratulations all!  You can read the first place essay at the bottom of the page and in subsequent days, we'll add the second and third place essays.  In the spring all the winning essays will be published in Res Publica.  

First place:       "The Good Catastrophe" by Caleb Boyer

Second place:  "We Have Less Time Than We Think" by Jackson Yenor

Third Place:     "Waiting for Change: It's Time to Abolish Tipping"
                            by Lucas Trott

Honorable Mention:  

           "Through the Lens of Mary" by Morgan Miller

           "Contrasts in Community: Healing at Home by Looking Abroad" 
                 by Dennis Clark  
           "In the Midnight of the Mind" by Tyler MacQueen

The Good Catastrophe

by Caleb Boyer

Most of us stopped reading fairy tales a long time ago. We often stop reading them as we get older. At the least, we stop taking them seriously. When I say fairy tales, I recall the fantastical stories written by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and authors like them. Their writings are the noblest and most complete kind of fairy tale, because they contain what Tolkien called “eucatastrophe” or, put simply, the good catastrophe. This term represents the sudden turn of events in a story which ensures the triumph of the good and the consolation of a happy ending. In his essay On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien claimed that such stories did not deny the existence of sorrow, failure, or evil. On the contrary, the existence of evil only heightens the joy of the good that is to prevail. However, fairy tales containing eucatastrophe did deny “universal final defeat.” In the end, goodness and virtue win against all odds.

Then we grow up. Experiencing the reality of our world has a way of invalidating our hope in goodness, virtue, and happy endings. Eventually we disregard fairy tales entirely and cease to believe in the existence of the good catastrophe. Instead we desire stories that reside in moral grey areas with “complex” characters that flippantly adhere to good and evil without consequence or redemption. We crave books, movies, and television series that end in catastrophe and final defeat. We argue that these stories are more valuable and relevant to our lives, because they seek to accurately reflect our reality and reveal something true about who and what we are as human beings. In actuality, we find these stories more attractive than fairy tales, because they demand little of us.

Stories that seek to reflect our reality do not directly compel us to pursue virtue. At the most, stories of ultimate final defeat, catastrophe, and moral tragedy may leave us displeased with the state of our reality and humanity, but they neglect to aim our mind and actions at something better. These stories leave us without a higher maxim of virtue to work toward. Eventually, we become blind to virtue and goodness itself, and we often prefer it this way. Human beings are complacent creatures and averse to being told they are wrong. This inclination only becomes stronger with age.

Fairy tales oppose our complacency and challenge our fear of being wrong. In stories that contain the good catastrophe, we discover an imagined reality and humanity that achieves a happy ending through goodness and virtue. In comparison to this achievement, we recognize the deficiencies of our own reality and humanity, and are convicted to change. However, we prefer the absence of the good catastrophe and the principle of virtue that it comprehends for the sake of complacency and pride.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” Children possess a characteristic that we often lose as we grow older. Due to their sense of innocence and curiosity, children are not afraid of being wrong. Interestingly enough, children are also incredibly creative. By their very nature, children reveal an obvious truth: creativity, innovation, and true change require that human beings risk being wrong and making mistakes. Children eventually lose this capacity, because they are taught that being wrong is the worst thing you can be. Our businesses, education systems, and fellow human beings stigmatize mistakes. As a result, we no longer want to risk being wrong, and lose our capacity for change and the pursuit of virtue. Perhaps someday we will be old enough to risk being wrong again.

If we overcome our complacency and fear of mistakes, we will recognize our desperate need for fairy tales. We don’t need to be told who we are, because, in reality, deep down, we already know who we are. We need to be given a glimpse of who we could and perhaps ought to be. We need fairy tales. We need the good catastrophe.

There is no doubt that fairy tales give us stories and characters that comprehend a standard of goodness and virtue we can never perfectly achieve, but that is the point. There is a Bonnie Tyler song called “Holding Out for a Hero.” The second half of the chorus reads, “I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the morning light/He’s gotta be sure/And it’s gotta be soon/And he’s gotta be larger than life!” That last line is important. We need heroes who are larger than ourselves and even larger than life itself. In other words, the best and most virtuous heroes demand superiority and, therefore, inequality. Unlike many of the fictional characters in literature and entertainment today, true heroes are not one of us. They are better than us. Establishing this distinction and, thus, maintaining the superiority that it comprehends is essential to our perception of virtue and provides us with a standard by which we may adjust and adorn our lives. Fairy tales have the unique and almost exclusive capacity for giving us heroes who are always and forever larger than life. If you will, fairy tales are the magic mirrors of our reality. By them, we do not see a reflection of ourselves as we are, but rather we are given a glimpse of the human beings we could become.

However, there is a catch: if we don’t believe in a reality where the good catastrophe is possible, our struggle to be virtuous is meaningless. But how can we rationally believe in a happy ending when the reality of our world appears to contradict its existence? C.S. Lewis said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” Fairy tales challenge and inspire us to be virtuous. More importantly, they suggest that we are made for something better. They all point to the ultimate hope that burns within our hearts: that a happy ending is certain and awaits us.