Do Writers Write Things They Disagree With?

December 10, 2025 - Published

Media literacy does not seem to be doing so hot in the U.S. right now, and I think many people would agree that they're not satisfied with the general level of media literacy on the internet in general. 

Being a rather complicated subject, I wanted to focus solely on a single concept for now: Are there people out there that actually work hours or months or years of their life to purposefully write down and publish things that they completely disagree with?

Of course, the answer is yes! 

On paper, this seems completely contradictory and utterly illogical, but I'm sure you're already thinking of ways that it could make sense. Since we were little, we were given stories that would be very straightforward about their lessons. Maybe you grew up with Aesop's fables where a short story illustrates a concept, and then the ending lesson explains what the takeaway was. Maybe you grew up with Peter Rabbit, where Peter goes against his mother's warnings and is quickly punished by the outside world for it. These stories have a purpose in mind, and build their story around what that purpose is, usually by rewarding the Good Guy and punishing the Bad Guy based on how they interact with that purpose.

However, we know from the real world that saying things in a straightforward way is not the only way to say it. If you heard someone say, "Wow, that guy is a real genius, isn't he?" then depending on the context, there's a good chance they're not referring to someone that they actually believe is the next Einstein. At the same time, if they instead said it in a more straightforward way like, "Wow, that guy is really dumb, isn't he?" then it wouldn't have the same punch to it, because it's the contrast in meaning that creates a unique effect (in this case, irony!).

For stories that do this, I have 2 examples that I feel illustrate this very well, but that means that this article has heavy spoilers for them, so you can skip their sections if you don't want to be spoiled. The first is the book Animal Farm, and the second is the movie Whiplash, because even though I'm using the words "writer" and "stories" in this article, I do extend those meanings to every type of artist and art.

Animal Farm

Animal Farm is a classic book that many of us were required to read in school. I'm not a huge fan of it. I have friends who aren't a huge fan of it. However, it's a great example of novel based in satire. Satire is difficult to define well, but in this case I'm using the definition of highlighting something the author disagrees with through the use of irony. 

This analysis is an easy one because the author has literally stated that the book was "primarily a satire on the Russian Revolution," but for the sake of learning media literacy, let's pretend for a second we didn't know that. Looking solely at the plot of Animal Farm... it's really weird, and that should be an immediate flag that it requires deeper analysis.

As a refresher, it's a story about a farm where the animals revolt against their farmer, taking over to create a better society. The pigs end up taking command, creating Commandments like "All animals are equal," and for a short time there is a better society with a better quality of living. However, eventually corruption takes over, with one of the pigs Napoleon taking total control. As his power grows, he exploits all the other animals while tricking them into thinking their life has only gotten better. He breaks the Commandments, but secretly modifies them while convincing the animals that they've never been changed. Eventually, he becomes indistinguishable from humans, the ones they overthrew in the first place.

Under traditional analysis, this story is appalling. Napoleon won! Surely that means the author approves of his actions, right?

Well, not necessarily. Just because someone wins at the end of a story does not mean they're supposed to be the good guy. Throughout the story, Napoleon is never likable. He consistently makes appalling, horrible decisions that are always at the detriment of the characters that ARE likable, usually due to their clearly-defined virtues like being hard-working or wanting equality. This makes it clear that the author doesn't agree with Napoleon -- otherwise, he would be written to be a lot more endearing to the reader.

There are also certain phrases that are clearly written to be satire. The most famous of these is the rewritten Commandment: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Does this sentence being in the book mean that the author agrees with this statement? No, this sentence in itself is clearly contradictory and nonsensical, and the Commandment's modification in the story is written as a large, consequential shift in the plot, so it's clear that the nonsense isn't accidental. This means something else.

When a story's messaging isn't clear, the first thing to look at is always allegory -- that is, what a story symbolizes through its plot and characters. If we look at Animal Farm by itself, it's just a weird story about farm animals failing to create a fair society (which wouldn't be unreasonable; they are literally just farm animals). It's not impossible for a story to just be that, but that's not what George Orwell writes. In these types of cases, it makes a lot more sense to judge the book against the real world, and to fill in the characters with real human beings to see what it represents.

Unfortunately, in this case, it's impossible to get to the real meaning without knowledge of history. Animal Farm was published shortly before the Cold War, where U.S. opinions of communism were at an all time low. The beginning of the story also has striking similarities to the Russian Revolution almost 30 years before that, with the rest of the plot mirroring the development of Soviet Union. "Animalism" is also, well, a pretty blunt reference to communism. Putting this together with the information from before, that means that Animal Farm is a novel criticizing the Soviet Union through the use of satire -- George Orwell does NOT believe that some people are "more equal than others," he's making fun of their philosophies by literally turning them into pigs who trick others with propaganda.

I imagine that at the time, this allegory would have been easy to pick up for readers, in the same way that if I wrote a story today where the main villain was an elongated muskrat, people would know exactly who I was talking about. However, even if you didn't get the exact allegory, there's still a lot to pick up on. Napoleon is obviously the bad guy, and most of the other animals can be considered good guys. If you asked yourself "what did the good guys do wrong?" to get the bad ending, you'll realize that there's not much that they could have done. The revolution is interpreted as a good thing, so he's most likely not criticizing that. Napoleon was also clearly too powerful to overthrow mid-way through the story, so the only thing they could have done better was setting up the new government in the first place. That would, of course, mean that Orwell was criticizing Animalism itself. While this might feel like he's saying "I don't agree with all people being equal," we have to pair it with the rest of our analysis -- Orwell doesn't agree with Napoleon. That only leaves the interpretation that Orwell doesn't agree with Animalism running a government because it allows bad actors like Napoleon to take over.

Hopefully that analysis makes sense to you, because I'm actually really tired of analyzing my required high school reading again, so let's move onto the second example.

Whiplash

Whiplash is a movie released in 2014, gaining incredible acclaim and multiple awards. Since it's not as old and widespread as Animal Farm, it might be worth recommending you to watch it... but I didn't enjoy watching it very much. It was very uncomfortable, with a lot of vulgar yelling, dark themes, and physical abuse. Yet, at the same time, it captured audiences and critics alike, and has presented itself as a fascinating movie as art.

To summarize the plot, the main character is a drummer named Andrew who wants to become a legend. He gets recruited by Fletcher, the conductor of his school's best ensemble, but quickly finds out he's incredibly strict and abusive. He throws chairs, slaps students, yells at them, and will not accept anything short of perfection. Despite this, Andrew wants nothing more than to please him. He breaks up with his girlfriend, practices relentlessly, and even after surviving a car accident, shows up bleeding to a competition just to keep playing. Fletcher is later terminated from the school for causing the death of one of his students, but invites Andrew to play for him in an unrelated festival. Despite trying to humiliate Andrew (who testified against him and helped him get terminated from the school), Andrew goes up on stage anyway and plays an improvised solo, impressing even Fletcher, who silently nods in approval before the movie ends.

While less direct as Animal Farm, this movie is interesting for a very similar reason -- the villain wins. Fletcher wants to create legendary drummers, and believes that the only way to do this is to be abusive. The main character comes to agree with this sentiment, and follows his directions to (presumably) become a legendary drummer himself. Does this mean the writers agree with Fletcher and approve of his actions?

No, and reading into the movie shows this. Fletcher is the bad guy. There is no other interpretation. He's nasty, mean, and the one scene where he's allowed to speak his philosophy reads a lot less as redemption and much more as the villain's evil speech where they try to justify their horrible actions. He's never sympathetic, and half his screentime is spent yelling at actual kids. So, why does he win?

The movie is a lot easier to interpret if you've watched similar films or read similar stories. Our culture praises people who put in the hard work and become legends, so there are a lot of similar stories. Some kid will want to be a legend, so they work hard, get past all the obstacles and haters, maybe even get the girl, and become famous. However, in the real world, there's usually a hidden cost. 

In Whiplash, this is represented mainly through Andrew's abuse. To get ahead of everyone else, he has to push himself beyond them, which meant pushing himself beyond any reasonable limit. He abuses his own body, he lets himself get yelled at, he loses the girl, but in the end, he becomes a legend. The film makes this all feel incredibly wrong, and by the end there's a lingering unasked question: Is this worth it? And it's that question that 

It's an incredibly well-done subversion on a common cliché storyline, where somehow the main character winning feels worse than if they just gave up. Considering how many famous real-life performers' lives have ended by drug overdoses or other means, whether we know if it was related to performing or not, the film highlights an issue that I think more people should think about. People often worry too much about being "the best" by any means necessary, even if being "the best" is usually not actually as good as it seems, and Whiplash taking the bad guy and making him win is a much more powerful way to illustrate this concept than if they simply made the good guy defeat him.

Well, this article ended up a lot longer than I expected, but I hope that just helped my points come across! There are, of course, many times that an author will accidentally imply the opposite point that they mean to make (which can also be difficult to analyze), but I wanted this article to solely focus on the circumstances where an author would do it on purpose.

There are too many times that I've seen people misinterpret an author's intentions because they're not analyzing a work of art as a whole. It's understandable in some cases but kind of worrying in others, especially when they, for example, take a villain's words out of context and try to claim those are the author's views. Like, To Kill a Mockingbird obviously does not condone racism because it shows racism, guys; the only way racism can be protested in a story is by having it be represented properly...

• Vecderg