“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald
Autumn is here again; winter is on its heels and already in the mountains above Leavenworth. The days are getting shorter. There is no better time to put down the phone and get lost in a good read.
As Fitzgerald implies, one of the great values of literature is that it unites people in common experience. The College Board’s 101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers is a list familiar to most in high school. Unfortunately, most also believe it to be a seemingly endless list of dusty, difficult and comparatively inaccessible works. Don’t fall for that false narrative, the classics of literature are called classic for a reason. One can relate this to travel: the classics are those sites that can’t be missed - the Golden Gate Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower. Just as these landmarks, the classics stay with the reader forever and continuously inform their lives. The classics have stood the test of time and hold in them characters, experiences, emotions, and perspectives that mean as much today as when they were written. As the Italian journalist and author Italo Calvino said: “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
Moreover, the classic novels, short stories, plays and poems are by no means of value only to “college-bound” readers. The lessons that course through all these works can guide every single CHS student toward a more successful, fully realized life. More than anything else though, the classics are just great, captivating stories of love, adventure, war, romance, deceit, tragedy and comedy. Here are six favorites, endorsed, by no less than the CHS Librarian and teachers of the Language Arts Department.
The Iliad, Homer
The Iliad is one of the greatest works in all of literature; one of the first and most influential. Attributed to the Greek poet Homer in the 8th Century B.C., the action in The Iliad takes place several hundreds of years earlier, in the Bronze Age, when mortals interacted with the gods, and tells of a few intense, particularly bloody weeks in the last year of the decade-long Trojan War. The Achaeans (Greeks) could win the war at last if only their god-like, warrior hero Achilles will return to the battle. Achilles, having been insulted by his leader, Agamemnon, had withdrawn from the fight to sulk and brood, and only returns when his best friend Patroclus is killed by the Trojan hero, Hector. Achilles then turns his anger from Agamemnon to Hector and the fall of Troy is at hand.
Besides being a wild and compelling story that is responsible for household names and phrases like “Helen of Troy” and “Achilles heel”, The Iliad is important to read for a myriad of other reasons. Among them is that it can act as a foundation for The Odyssey, which is the story of the Achaean hero Odysseus's voyage home after the Trojan War and is taught as part of the CHS Language Arts curriculum. In addition, like most Greek myths, understanding The Iliad is helpful to make sense of the past, present and future, as it one of the foundations of literature itself and a pillar of world culture. CHS English teacher, Mrs. Brixey, described The Iliad as “a tremendous challenge to read, but rewards the efforts of Greek mythology lovers in every chapter. It reveals much of the in-fighting and back-story that happened between the Olympians (in Homer's imagination) . . . [and] is required reading in many military academies today . . . giving one insight into the nature of war, pride, and the brotherhood of soldiers.”
Metamorphoses, Ovid
This collection of stories by the first century Roman poet Ovid may seem intimidating and exotic, however, it is possibly the most accessible, most enjoyable, easiest to understand and relevant to high-school-aged readers of any of the books reviewed here. Metamorphoses means change - “especially into the adult form” - and at no point in life is that change “into the adult form” greater than it is during the teenage years. Metamorphoses is a collection of Greek and Roman myths, much like the folk tales of The Brothers Grimm (“Hansel and Gretel”, “Rapunzel”, “Beauty and the Beast”) and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson (“The Little Mermaid”, “The Ugly Duckling”, “The Princess and the Pea”). One myth that illustrates the change at the heart of Ovid’s stories is that of Arachne, a mortal girl and gifted weaver, was bold enough to challenge the goddess Athena to a tapestry weaving contest. When Athena finds Arachne’s tapestry to be not only without flaw, but insulting to the gods, she is enraged and ultimately transforms Arachne into a spider, condemning her to weave forever. The myth of Arachne is an origin tale of the spider and an admonition of hubris.
Since the work is broken up into so many different stories, it can be read at the readers desired pace and can be just taken one story at a time. In fact, as is discussed in the introduction to the 2013 Everyman’s Library edition of the piece, it was the stories themselves that made Metamorphoses Shakespeare’s favorite work and Ovid his favorite poet - so much so that he “borrowed” a number of the plots in Metamorphoses for some of his own plays, famously including Midsummer Night’s Dream. Simply put, Metamorphoses is a collection of entertaining stories well worth any reader’s time.
Macbeth, William Shakespeare
“Double, double toil and trouble”; “fair is foul and foul is fair”; “something wicked this way comes”. These famous quotes and others from Macbeth are known by most people. The same is true of so many more of Shakespeare’s phrases, which are woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. Reading the play that brought them to life makes them much more relevant and enjoyable.
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's great tragedies, filled with ambition, greed, and the misery and heartache that often follow. The plot, which moves quickly, begins with three witches, in long ago Scotland, prophesizing to the war hero Macbeth that he will be king one day. Not long after, Macbeth, with the encouragement of his wife, Lady Macbeth, makes the prophesy come true by murdering the king as he slept. Macbeth assumes the throne and begins a bloody reign, intended, in part, to cover up his initial crime. Soon regret and extreme pangs of guilt, rather than the crown, are found to be the true rewards for the pair.
Reading Shakespeare, to one degree or another, is part of every student’s journey through school and Macbeth is a worthy stop for all. In support of that suggestion, Ms. Rosenfield, a CHS Language Arts teacher, stated that she, “personally think[s] Macbeth is underrated as a Shakespearean classic - between witches, prophesies, murder, madness, and conspiracy, what more could you want? Macbeth often gets overlooked in favor of more popular selections like Hamlet, but I always find it action-packed and entertaining.”
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
One of the most beloved and widely read authors in the English language is Jane Austen. Austen made her mark by writing about the misunderstandings and comedies that came about because of the manners and rigid conventions of the English upper middle classes at the turn of the 18th century. Her most famous novels, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma, all speak to issues surrounding social class, marriage, and gender roles. All have been made into movies multiple times over and clearly influenced PBS’s most watched series, Downton Abbey. As well her novel, Pride and Prejudice, was read aloud to Winston Churchill to help him recover from pneumonia during World War II.
Jane Austen’s novels are about people misconstruing other people’s intentions, a theme that teenagers should easily relate to. Pride and Prejudice is no exception. The story is set in the English countryside and, among its many captivating characters, revolves around the romantic, but stormy relationship between the second oldest sibling of the five daughter Bennet family, Elizabeth, and Fitzwilliam Darcy (Mr. Darcy), an aristocrat with vast land holdings. Though Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, at first meeting, are interested in each other, it is decidedly not due to romantic feelings. Their respective pride (his great wealth, her self-respect) and prejudices (hers against Mr. Darcy's s arrogance, his against her family's class) prevent that. Like most first impressions in Austen novels, Elizabeth and Darcy, come to see how their pride and prejudices were wrong. In the end, the boorish Mr. Darcy becomes almost as beloved as Elizabeth.
The portrayal of a world long gone and comedy of errors that pervade make Pride and Prejudice worth reading. However, like the other works in this list, character development and the expert story telling itself that make this book unforgettable and so admired. Elizabeth Barrett was Jane Austen’s favorite character and getting to know her and the many other notable characters in this piece will delight any reader.
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
In the introduction to the 2013 Penguin Books edition of Frankenstein, by the Mexican producer, author and editor of the Penguin Horror Series, Guillermo del Toro, we learn that in 1816 the rebellious, eighteen-year-old, Mary Shelley escaped the poor weather of London with her husband, Percy Shelley, and the poet Lord Byron to vacation in rented villas on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. On arrival, they found that (due to the deadliest volcanic eruption in human history in Indonesia the year before, as scientists now know) the European continent too was just as cold and rainy. Miserable and couped indoors, they and others began to try and find was to entertain themselves , so Byron set for them a challenge, to write a ghost story. Byron’s doctor John Polidori, wrote a novella called “The Vampyre: A Tale”, which was published in 1819, and is thought to be the first piece of fiction to include a blood-sucking character and a precursor to Dracula. Not be outdone, Mary Shelley began her masterpiece, Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, which was published in 1818.
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is the Titan who created mankind from clay and gave those mortals fire, thereby liberating them from the gods. Mary Shelley develops in Frankenstein a Prometheus like character - the scientist, Victor Frankenstein - who created life, from parts of cadavers, in the form of a figuratively and literally larger-than-life monster. However, Dr. Frankenstein is horrified with his creation and consequently rejects it. The monster, who like the humans upon which it was modeled, wants for family and friendship. Those hopes dashed and rejected by its creator; the monster begins a murderous spree against those whom Frankenstein loves.
Shelley’s story changed the course of literature and culture. As Ms. Robison, of the CHS English department, said: “Frankenstein is an excellent book for students to add to their reading list for a number of reasons: it is largely credited as the first science fiction novel, it is alluded to throughout other significant pieces of literature, it was written by a woman in a time when women were thought incapable of such a feat, and is a phenomenal horror story.”
Ms. Rosenfield stood in agreement saying, “Frankenstein is one of my all-time favorite pieces of literature, and you can't help but be impressed by Mary Shelley as an author and historical figure. The book explores terror in an eerily relevant way and is one of the most delicious and maddening examples of irony in English Lit. Although it was published in 1818, Mary Shelley can still stun and repulse a reader in the best possible way in 2020.”
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Swanky, which means stylishly, expensive and luxurious, is the word that often first comes to mind when one thinks of The Great Gatsby. That atmosphere fills the works of American author and Princeton drop-out, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote about the Roaring Twenties - the post-World War I, Prohibition, pre-Great Depression era known for flappers, pinstripe suits and lavish, uninhibited parties fueled by illegal alcohol. Yet, hidden behind the glitz and champagne, Fitzgerald also reveals the darker side of the period: excess, duplicity, ruined lives and loss of the American Dream.
The story is told with a hint of sadness by Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner who is remembering the year he left his home to make his fortune in New York City. Carraway rents a house in the suburb, West Egg, Long Island next door to Jay Gatsby, a rags-to-riches tycoon who throws parties emblematic of the era. Across a small inlet from Carraway and Gatsby, lives Daisy Buchanan, Carraway’s cousin and the reason Gatsby lives in West Egg. Gatsby has been in love for years with Daisy, with whom he once had a romantic relationship, but who is now married to another man who, in turn, is, at the same, time jealous of Gatsby and having an affair of his own. In fewer than 200 pages, Fitzgerald spins a narrative packed with engaging plot twists and insightful revelations about human nature.
CHS librarian Mrs. Willett captures the novel perfectly: “The Great Gatsby is an engaging book to read. I would consider it a Romantic Tragedy. It takes place in the 1920s. There are lavish parties, love, lost love, tragedy, and characters that you think you know, but do you? [The book] was published in 1925. It wasn't until 40 years later when [it] was distributed to soldiers in WWII for free that it became a classic. Unfortunately, Fitzgerald died in 1940, thinking himself a failure and that his writings would not be remembered.”
Challenging literature features sophisticated writing, elevated vocabulary and compelling ideas. Reading the great books is, perhaps, the very best way to preserve and enhance academic abilities. Not least of all, the classics contain great stories that have stood the test of time. If none of the six reviewed here catch your eye, there are many hundreds more from which to choose, including from those of The College Board’s 101 Great Books, a link to which is below.
I would definitely consider reading Frankenstein and The Great Gatsby. They both sound very interesting.