Harry S Truman |
Once Shakespeare’s plays entered the American classroom in the late 1800s, most future presidents would have studied his works in high school or college, just as other Americans did. Harry Truman’s essays from his high-school days in Independence, Missouri, give us a special look at one such classroom encounter. Truman was a senior—which meant a tenth grader, since tenth was then the final grade—when he wrote a series of essays about the characters of The Merchant of Venice for Miss Bloom’s English class at Independence High School.
As noted by Raymond Geselbracht of the Truman Presidential Museum and Library, who wrote about the essays, the papers may not fully conform to the academic expectations of that time; “there's too much opinion in them, too much Harry.”
Writing on Shylock, for example, Truman comments sympathetically, "Think of him leaving the court room broken, childless, everything but killed. He said he was content to die. What else could he do?" And, "I never saw a Jew, Christian or any other man who, if he had the chance wouldn't take revenge, although he may say 'Love your enemies' and a lot of other things of the same sort."
Truman’s essay on Portia veers far afield to discuss a famous line from Hamlet—“frailty, thy name is woman.” Truman (who had already met his future wife, Bess, in elementary school) launches immediately into a defense of strong women. History shows “how many a man or nation would have fallen if it hadn't been for a woman," he writes. As for a woman’s supposed weakness, he adds, “She's generally frail to a man when she has the best of him."
Library of Congress