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FREE INQUIRY IN CREATIVE SOCIOLOGY Volume 39, Number 1, Spring 2011 SOCIAL SHEPHERDING AND MORAL NETS AS FOUND IN SOME NOVELS BY FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY, JAMES A. MICHENER, GEORGE ORWELL, B. F. SKINNER, AND C. S. FORESTER Ralph G. O'Sullivan Chillicothe, IL Abstract This article uses selected passages from the Old and New Testaments to illustrate the common presence of good shepherd and moral net themes in some of the novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky, James A. Michener, George Orwell, B.F. Skinner, and C.S. Forester. Traditional sociology texts and classroom lectures rightly address such topics as normal parts of social life, but usually objectively; novelists do the same, yet with much more passion. While no "a-ha" moments, statistical data, or tests of hypotheses are offered , here, students of sociology are encouraged to follow Ogburn's advice to go '' outside traditional boundaries and sources of knowledge to find sociology and have fun doing so, because the stable templates of social organization are there to be found and made available to others. INTRODUCTION A theologically-based reference to the good shepherd is found in New Sheep are often portrayed as Testament readings, specifically the being stupid animals, incapable of Gospels of Matthew 18:10, Luke awareness, self-direction and self- 15:3-7, and John 10:7-16 where 1 defense. When in pasture, they need Jesus is the shepherd over his to be shepherded by human or by followers. While those references domesticated guardians, leading pertain to the religion based upon them and protecting them against Jesus' ministry, he lived in times of threats. Good shepherds, then, know the Law and the Prophets (hereafter, all members of their flocks and their Old Testament). Who, then, was the peculiarities: They know the strong good shepherd for his neighbors and and the weak, the healthy and the him? A menu of people in that role unhealthy, the dominant and the would include Moses and descendent submissive. Social shepherding is the leaders, but the list would be topped process of guiding human flocks, and with God. Judaism's scriptures 1 the expression has three foundations. provide many references to God as a The first is a combination of Judaic shepherd, and two depict vivid , and Christian backgrounds that are images of his pastural and pastoral used only for infrastructures, not as responsibilities: They are in the book advocacies. The second is of Isaiah 40:11 and in Psalm 23. sociological, and the third stems from The second and sociological questions in psychology. foundation is Davis and Stazs' 1 FREE INQUIRY IN CREATIVE SOCIOLOGY Volume 39, Number 1, Spring 2011 concept of a moral net (1990). A found in a variety of places, but I moral net represents the consistent have chosen locations in popular underpinnings to social structure literature. upon which human behavior and This study investigates social human interaction are based. It is shepherding in several novels by comprised of mores, beliefs, and noted authors. I first look at Fyodor norms that allow collectives and Dostoevsky's 1880/1996 The Bro­ individuals to create partitions thers Karamazov (hereafter, Brothers separating truth from lies, right from K ...). The next book is James A. wrong, good from bad, and the :Michener's The Source (1969), appropriate from the inappropriate. A succeeded by George Orwell's moral net may have religious or Animal Farm (1946/1962b) and his secular bases, or a melding of the 1949/1961 Nineteen Eighty-Four two. Once established, it can become (hereafter, 1984). These books are an internal mechanism of social followed by B.F. Skinners' 1948/1969 control when people accept it and Walden Two (hereafter, W-2), and the treat it as their own; or, it can be selection concludes with C.S. imposed upon a population through Forester's 1955 The Good Shepherd forces of social power. Elements of (hereafter, TGS). Additional works by the net may be eternal, or they may these authors, and by others, are also be changed as events, or as leaders, cited for background material and ] require. comparisons. ·.. The third principle of origination This article represents a study of 1 comes from psychologist B.F. Skinner sociology in literature, using the f (1964/1972a). Humans have certain selected authors and novels as a ·' moral commitments to others combination of purposive and 1 [resulting in obligatory acts based on convenience samples. All of us have I existing moral nets]. Conforming or favorite data sources, paradigms, good behavior is achieved when theories, research methods, scholars appropriate moral codes are we often cite, and background internalized. Sometimes, though, the assumptions about sociology: I have morality of righteousness is nudged two. First, I believe that sociology is by those whose other-directed narrative, making it appropriate to intentions may be questionable. He speak with the judicious voice of the wonders, when does the moral or first-person singular (the "I" and the cultural designer become a despot "my''), allowing the reader to see how (Evans 1968:4 7) shedding the the writer's experiences contribute to shepherd's staff and creating the research. Second, I believe that i tyranny? A second question asks we should follow Ogburn's advice whether or not the individual accedes from 1930 when he invited us to look to the imposed modifications of the for sociology anywhere, especially new . moral nets, or maintains the realms outside tradition, and present ones that have been acceptable? our findings to others, making Answers to these questions can be sociology, I add, enjoyable to the 2 FREE INQUIRY IN CREATIVE SOCIOLOGY Volume 39, Number 1, Spring 2011 researcher and the audience. After his military service as a commissioned officer, he got into THE AUTHORS legal trouble. There are several imprecise accounts of involvement A variety of novelists could have with a political organization where his been chosen for this study, but ideas membership resulted in arrest and from the ones selected offered a fair imprisonment in Katorga, part of the degree of fit and diversity of tsarist prison system that later characterization to the themes of became known as the gulag social shepherding and moral nets. archipelago under Josef Stalin. Before discussions of the novels Dostoeysky's 1861 /2008 Memoirs begin, though, I offer biographical from the House of the Dead sketches of the writers and back (hereafter, Memoirs ... ) is a report of stories. his sentence, identifying the same living conditions as Alexander Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) Solzhenitzyn's 1963 One Day in the Dostoevsky was born in Moscow, Life of Ivan Denisovich (hereafter, Russia, where his father was a One Day ... ). Both writers were physician for the poor. Sometimes his imprisoned under fluid definitions for father is portrayed as being sedition, so their books contain , demanding, and at other times a several sets of parallel ideas. One of caring and understanding parent. those thoughts is that there are two Either way, Dostoevsky's childhood types of prisoners: common and left indelible images affecting his political. Common prisoners simply literary leanings, often addressing violated criminal codes. Political conflicts in the personal and social prisoners (poles) were guilty of lives of his portrayals. The tumultuous political wrongdoing, violating the family in Brothers K... is a case in integrity of the state or its leaders' point. dictates. Dostoevsky, and later I first read the novel during my Solzhenitzyn, were so labeled, as initial enrollment as a freshman at the was Orwell's Winston Smith in 1984. eastern Illinois university from which I Dostoevsky's Memoirs... and later graduated twice. My literature Solzhenitzyn's One Day... have classmates and I used it as a text, another point in common. Each book accompanied by a compilation of identifies one character who pays short stories by Leo Tolstoy that was particular attention to his religion. more enjoyable than Dostoevsky's Dostoevsky's Isaiah Fomich regularly reflective piece. While I maintain that conducted his Friday night Sabbath, , opinion, Brothers K... chapter on believing deeply that Judaic Law is , "The Grand Inquisitor" still captures everywhere at all times. In similar , my attention. fashion, Solzhenitzyn's Alyosha, a Brothers K... was Dostoevsky's Baptist, read The New Testament last book, and many literary analysts regularly. Suffering punishment for feel that it was his best achievement. common crimes is appropriate and 3 FREE INQUIRY IN CREATIVE SOCIOLOGY Volume 39, Number 1, Spring 2011 necessary, he believed, but per­ known for their short titles. secution based on his religious Information from his autobiography identity required continued faith, The World Is My Home (1992) and prayer, proclamation, and witnessing. from two biographers (Hayes 1984; Dostoevsky embraced Christian May 2005) reveal different yet orthodoxy and he was a monarchist complementary details about the because each provided its own style same man. Michener was raised a of predictability. The sweeping social Quaker with Presbyterian flavorings, aphorisms of late 1700s France, and but. held little affinity with any religion emerging economic and political or denomination. He was interested in ideologies . and disruptive social religion as a social institution, a movements of western Europe's mid- "religious sociologist" (Michener 1800s troubled him, fearing that they 1992:489), but chose to be identified could migrate into his homeland. as a liberal humanist. In like fashion, Religious and political conflicts were he called himself a writer rather than also prominent themes in his major an author. He became wealthy and novels. was generous with his earnings, but he never forgot the deprivations of i James A. Michener (1907-1997) childhood. He was a social activist for Raised in Doylestown, PA, worthy causes and received the Michener was born into poverty with a Presidential Medal of Freedom from clouded ancestry, and was a Gerald Ford in 1977.

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