Interesting Stories

"Say, Anne, won't you tell me a story 'fore I go to sleep? I don't want a fairy story. They're all right for girls, I s'pose, but I want something exciting . . . lots of killing and shooting in it, and a house on fire, and in'trusting things like that."

Thus says Davy in Anne of Avonlea, by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Much has been said about violence in video games, but the mistake is hand-wringing over external influences. Davy here expresses a core principle of manliness in a novel written by a female in 1909. As long as there are boys, there will be cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, rough-housing, horseplay, violent videogames, and all around general trouble.