ALL THE 14-YEAR-OLD BOYS kill their grandmothers.
I stole the line— “It was the day my grandmother exploded”—from Iain Banks’ novel The Crow Road.
I write it on the whiteboard on the first day of school, and ask my ninth graders to compose a short story starting with that prompt. The girls go for metaphor—their Nanas and Mee-Maws explode in frustration or laughter.
The boys go literal and explode their grandmothers into bone-chunks and guts. Usually I laugh. Not this year. I’m pregnant with a baby boy, and I’d prefer he never explode anything, especially the women who love him.
During the five years I’ve taught this lesson, meant to celebrate the punch of a great opening line, the Tsarnaev brothers blew up the Boston Marathon finish line, George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, Adam Lanza devastated Newtown, Conn., by firing bullets into each of 20 small children and six adults, and Elliot Rodger carried out a misogyny-fueled killing spree in Isla Vista, Calif. I live in Texas, where gun-lovers and worried moms persist in a steady standoff about open carry laws.
My students remain unaffected by these horrors—they’re privileged children at a college prep school, the boys more concerned with GPAs and J.J. Watt’s football stats than the way some males—especially white males—in our country use violence or sullen indifference to respond to their perceived disenfranchisement. They idolize Walter White and George R.R. Martin; most identify as Christians but cannot tell me who Job is or recite the beatitudes.
I worry about my unborn son. How do I raise a good white male? I ask all the good men I know, and they give me the same answer: “He’ll need a mentor.”
The word “mentor” comes from the Odyssey. Every year, my freshmen read Homer’s epic poem, and every year the myth turns and turns like a kaleidoscope, its shapes and colors coalescing into bright, complex new truths. Homer does not begin his song with Odysseus, the war hero, but with his son, Telemachus, home alone in Ithaca and struggling to assert himself, a boy-child on the cusp of manhood. Telemachus does not remember his father, but he yearns for kleos, the renown or glory bestowed by fathers onto their sons. A spoiled prince, he feels powerless in the face of suitors hell-bent on seducing his mother and stealing his riches. His long-absent father may or may not have died during his sea voyage home from Troy.
Telemachus ping-pongs between impulsive, angry fits and quiet desperation. Then the goddess Athena appears on his doorstep. She disguises herself, first as Mentes and then as Mentor, both old friends of Odysseus, both with names that mean “wise.” Athena counsels Telemachus using Mentor’s build and voice. Telemachus needs Athena—his father is war-torn, traumatized, a broken man. When Odysseus arrives home, he pulls Telemachus into a violent, ugly retribution; father and son slaughter the suitors, hang handmaids by their braids, and dismember a disloyal servant. Just as civil war threatens to ensue, Athena saves the day. Homer ends his story with the goddess, again disguised as Mentor, quelling anger and inspiring peace in her mortal mentees.
When news of the Boston Marathon bombing hit my computer, I remember feeling concerned for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, hiding, wounded, at the bottom of a boat. I remember thinking, “Telemachus.” So many violent young men share his story: absent fathers, a sense of powerlessness and shame, a personal history of conflict and uprootedness, economic hardship, damaging myths of masculinity their only influences, and a lack of true mentors to empower them out of entitlement and vengeance and into compassion and grace.
I CAN’T RAISE a good boy on my own. No mother can. My son will need male mentors. All our sons need them, and their mentors cannot and should not always be their fathers. Right now our young boys need elders to guide them over the various thresholds of their lives—we have few male teachers in lower grade levels, few male clergy uninfected by the prevailing social politics and who remember Jesus as a God of gentleness and love, few noble politicians, few professional athletes that value character over dominance, and few popular models of masculinity that meet Homer’s original criteria.
Most stories about maleness suffer from what theologian Walter Wink called “the myth of redemptive violence,” the dangerous narrative that violence is a natural means to order and stability, and that power in others is a threat to our own power. These stories promote a male empowerment that requires the disempowerment of others and therefore views female or minority empowerment movements as threats.
Mentor is a wise, older male, but he has internalized a divine, female wisdom. He embodies female power; his strength does not repress the other, but integrates it.
The best representation of male power I’ve seen in the popular media in the last 10 years was Friday Night Lights’ Eric Taylor, the head coach of the Dillon Panthers on NBC’s sleeper hit. Taylor coaches his players—largely fatherless—on and off the field, and while he sets steep physical expectations, violence is never the endgame. In his khaki shorts, white sneakers, and well-parted hair, he is no paragon of traditional masculinity. Still, struggling young men leave his team whole. They understand community and display real moral strength.
But Eric is not the savior of the saga: His marriage is the true story behind the boys’ success. He mentors so well because Tami Taylor’s voice sings in him. In one episode, she tells him, “You are a teacher first, and a molder of men.” She is sparkling, grey-eyed Athena, the wise goddess inside the man who saves the boys.
Let some divine power inspire the men of my generation toward mentorship. No more explosions. Let these men have clear eyes and full hearts. Let them work with women and not against them. Let us together embolden our little boys to seek lasting peace.
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