No, I don’t have a cite other than personal experience; this is just a wondering of mine. In my high school I have read classics as requirements; trouble is, they’re all the depressing classics. Examples:
To Kill a Mockingbird*: Innocent black guy gets lynched.
Romeo and Juliet *: Star-crossed couple dies in double suicide. Antigone: Main character dies for her beliefs, and her betrothed also dies. Lord of the Flies: Almost every kid dies.
Julius Caesar*: Three words- “Et tu, Brute?”
Native Son *: Idiot murders a girl by accident, covers it up horribly, gets sent to jail and dies. A Farewell to Arms: Main female lead dies in childbirth, and her child dies as well.
The Great Gatsby *: Woman gets hit by her husband’s motorcar, and dies.
Please keep in mind that these are all the classics I’ve read up to this school year (I’m a senior now, and we read Siddhartha, which ruled). My memory is kinda fuzzy, so please feel free to correct me if need be.
What I’m wondering is this: Are these classics taught in order to prepare students for the depression of the Real World ™? Do teachers * unintentionally* teach the darker classics? Is my state (VA) the only one that has these for a high school level requirement?
What books do you remember having to read in high school, and do they fit my proposed pattern?
Yes, because in the “Real World” you speak of, there is no such thing as a happy ending, silly!
Just kidding. Actually, I don’t know why English curriculums often contain these books. If you’re interested in something a little more light-hearted, try some of Shakespeare’s comedies, or some good old Jane Austen … classics, but not so depressing! You may even be able to take a college course in one or both of these. Good luck, and happy (future) reading!
Thanks for your correction! Like I said, it’s been awhile since I read these (TKAM was read my freshman year). If I missed anything else, feel free to let me know!
That was my theory in high school. The only classic we read not on your list are:
A Separate Peace: Envious young man cripples his best friend, and all his other friends die or go crazy, in the middle of World War II. The Catcher in the Rye: A young man makes his peace with adolescence by losing his mind.
I would suggest, gently, that you’re missing the point of most of these works. Why focus on Tom Robinson’s death? What did Jme and Scout learn from the events of the summer? How did they view their dad after everything? Why did Atticus shoot the rabid dog?
Sure, Jay Gatsby dies. But was that the point of the story? Or was it about why he lived as he did - about his single dream of showing Daisy his success, and how it warped everything he did?
It doesn’t change when you get to college. Everything is either hellaciously boring or everyone dies, with a few exceptions. Candide is the only one I’ve had so far.
There aren’t really a lot of Great Books that are consistently happy and uplifting. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a classic book that isn’t kind of a downer in the end. Maybe Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Happiness, as a general rule, is dull, and there’s not a lot you can say about it. (As Tolstoy put it, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”)
In school I studied Great Expectations, which was more dull than sad to Kill A Mockingbird The Redemption of Eldson Bird which, tho’ excellent, is a big ol’ downer 1984. As I Lay Dying I found this book to be not sad-sad, just very depressing.
I studied three Shakespear tragedies - Romeo and Juliet, Othello and King Lear.
We did study The Importance of Being Earnest one year, so it wasn’t all doom and gloom at Epsom Girls’ Grammar!
I agree with Bricker - the point isn’t that they are sad, it is what the lead characters, and you, get out of them. Scout learns through the tragedy of Tom what treating people fairly is and why you should fight for it. And so on.
Most enduring works are commentaries on the human condition and focus on people and lives going through turmoil to illustrate the human condition. What’s the ancient curse? “May you live in interesting times” - meaning not the boring peaceful parts of history, but during famine, flood, ward, evil - the stuff that makes it into the history books. So it is with literature.
Many, many of these works have funny parts to them, but as a rule, most comedies don’t endure in as lasting a way as dramas. There are exceptions - She Stoops to Conquer or The Rivals; the Importance of Being Earnest, or even Catch-22 (a black comedy, but a comedy nonetheless…)
And finally - in Native Son - Bigger was not an idiot. He was a downtrodding, lower class, uneducated man thrust into a situation out of his narrow range of control. Importance distinction and the basis of the book’s key points about the existential existence of the black man in America.
What, no mention of Of Mice and Men or The Red Pony?
Also, a little correction. In Lord of the Flies, most of the boys survive to the end. The only important character killed is Piggy.
I’m going to go with some of the previous posters, and say that you may be focusing on the wrong aspect of the book in some cases. In Lord of the Flies, Ralph and Piggy remain in opposition to Jack up to the very end, even to the point of risking their lives to maintain what little bit of civilization is left to them.
Ho, boy. Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Par Lagerkvist’s The Dwarf, and Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve each had me depressed for weeks at a time after reading them.
But Carson McCuller’s A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud, Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and Rodolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima were all incredibly uplifting and inspiring.
The point isn’t to be reading warm and fuzzy feel-good pieces that merely entertain - if that were the case, then you’d be stuck with contemporary pop fiction and be bored to tears. Or worse - 24/7 Piers Anthony and Stephen King! (Don’t get me wrong, I love both those authors, but the content of their works don’t have a whole lot to say about the world we live in, IMHO).
The point is to draw connections between what’s happening in the literature and other things you are learning about the world around you - the human condition, universal themes, history, politics, religion, love, death, and everything else in-between. These works become part of the lierary canon because they have something important to say about our world; they are lasting and remain relevant across decades, cultures, genders and socio-economic status. They make us look a little more deeply at the world around us, instead of merely glossing over the surface as we are wont to do as the “…all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world” (Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club!). Mostly, they make us think. As you read this stuff and react to it, you come to have a better understanding of who you are and what you believe. It’s a cool phenomenon, and it’s why I’m an English Lit major!
Oh, come on! My favorite part of As I Lay Dying is the following chapter, which I will quote for you verbatim, from memory: “My mother is a fish.” That is some serious comedy, that. In fact, I generally find Faulkner to be so self-important that it is unintentionally hysterical.
High school for me was a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, it wasn’t all doom-and-gloom. I mean, sure, you had your King Lears and your Rabbit, Runs, but we also read:
OK, let me explain something, since I can’t edit the OP. :smack:
I’m not saying that death is all I got out of these books. I am actually an avid reader and enjoyed most of the classics I read, except for Native Son and Lord of the Flies. Those two books just rubbed me the wrong way. Anyway, I am only noticing a pattern in the books taught in high school- each one, up to senior year, has contained the death of a major character/major characters. I’m also wondering if anyone else noticed that in their own high school experience. I am definitely not saying that death is the point of said classics. If that seemed to be my theory, I’m sorry I screwed up the message I was trying to get across. I’m just recording and analyzing a pattern, nothing more.
LadySybil, my daughter also noticed the depressing nature of high school reading assignments–particularly junior year. She was struggling with depression, and I asked if perhaps she could read Little Women or Winnie the Pooh or Sherlock Holmes or Merchant of Venice. But, no, it had to be Edgar A. Poe, Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet (among others).
Now, I love a good, deep, book, dealing with complex emotional issues. But, at least that year, she did not need this type of literature. She needed quality escapism.
I’ve been working with the local high school since then to see if they can mix it up a little–get some better balance. “Unfortunately,” a lot of good literature deals with heavy subjects.
I would count Simon as an important character too and, other than the sow, his is the first death to show just how far into savagery Jack and the tribe have descended. Otherwise your correction is true - I think the only other boy to die was the unnamed one who first claimed to have seen the beastie, and we never saw it happen.
as_u_wish and LadySybil, of course kids should read lighter fiction in their own time, and thanks to Harry Potter, a lot more are these days. However, can we really learn that much from Sherlock Holmes or Winnie The Pooh? Yes, it’s easy to describe the likes of Lord Of The Flies as depressing, but its 200 or so pages hold material that shows powerful elements of human nature and this makes it very easy to teach and thus, hopefully, much easier to learn from.
Remember that kids are going to have to write essays and exams on these books. As much as I despised Far From The Madding Crowd, I know that I found it much easier to write on it than I would have if we’d been studying something lighter, especially a comedy. The one time that we were given free choice, the vast majority of those that chose comedy got the lowest grades, despite several of those normally being in the upper reaches of the class.
