Get Some Class
Written on January 7, 2011 by theboneshavespoken
Category: General Talk
You know it. I know it. We all know it. Classics dominate English classes. Thoroughout all of high school, you’re bombarded with almost nothing but classics. The Catcher in the Rye. To Kill a Mockingbird. Three Sisters. Candide. The Dubliners. Fahrenheit 451. You name it, you read it. And if they’re not shoving some antique book down your throat, they’re making you decipher The Road Not Taken for the fifth year in a row.
This is not to say that all classics are bad. But neither are all classics good. Let’s try on Waiting for Godot for size. After the second day of reading this book, I went up to our teacher and asked, half-jokingly, “Is there any plot in this?!” – to which he replied, “No.” He was grinning, but serious. And he was right. Insomniacs, this is the book for you! It sure helped me sleep, anyway.
There are some really good, thought-provoking classics out there. Fahrenheit 451 is the best book I ever had to read for school. The writing style isn’t difficult to understand, and the story flows well. The plot is, well, existent for starters, and it goes a step further by being interesting. F 451 is all about censorship – the word that every teen’s ear catches, because you know that if something’s censored, you’re not supposed to know about it, and that just goes against teenage dignity. If you ever have a chance, take a gander at the list of Banned Books. Most of what you’ve read in school is probably on there. http://www.banned-books.com/bblist.html
There are always going to be classics you just can’t stand. Look at me – I never finished Waiting for Godot, and I was one fancy side-step away from tossing The Great Gatsby into the shredder! (Please note that I am not advocating the destruction of books. If I had self-restraint, too can have it too.) My suggestion is not to shun all classics altogether just because the books you read in school are classics, and you didn’t like them. There are two reasons for this: for one, I’m pretty sure it’s a law that there has to be at least one book each year that someone hates. For the second, if you cut yourself off from things you might not like, you’re losing the chance to find something you love. I used to think all classics would be dry, wordy and difficult to understand without a teacher’s guidance. After buying The Jungle Books on a whim, I discovered how wrong I was. (Best $6 I ever spent.)
I’m not trying to encourage you to go to the nearest Barnes and Noble to buy a random classic, but I think that if you give a classic a shot, you might like it. And classics are more diverse than you might imagine. Dracula is a vampire story, and who in this age doesn’t like vampires?
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