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The Grumpy Grammarian

From my own experience and the reports of others, it is apparent that many literature classes do not foster an appreciation of lterature.  Indeed, they sometimes produce the opposite effect.  They may even cause students to conclude that works labeled "literary classics" are not worth reading at all and are appreciated and understood only by wacky English teachers.

To state all the reasons this happens would take a book.  In general, though, the trouble with the approaches that do not work is that they do not help students to relate to the works and thus do not show them what made the works classics in the first place.

As was mentioned in Part 1 of this article, one characteristic that we have a right to demand from literature is relevance.  If it doesn't relate to us, we're not likely to get much out of it.  However, our relationship with a book, like any relationship, is a two-sided situation, requiring that we give as well as take.  We're entitled to require a book to do something to draw us in, but we must allow ourselves to be willing to be involved.  It's easy enough to do this if the characters are similar to us, so naturally children like books in which principal characters are children.  How often, though, are the characters like us in particulars?  Frequently, they are from a different social stratum (even a different time period), may be of a different nationality, may have character traits that we don't share, and so on.  Superficially, at least, we probably have little in common with them.

Yet, if we suspend our individual identities for a moment, we have one characteristic in common with all of them – our humanity.  That is no small matter.  Most serious works of literature are as much about what people feel and think (the two are not as distinct as they may seem) as about what they do.  Actions and external events may move the plot along, but the reactions of the characters are what keep us involved in the story.  Here we can identify because, different as we may be, we as human beings are capable of the same emotions and thoughts as the fictional characters are.  At that level, we can identify.  We know what it is like to fall in love, so we can understand when they do.  We know what it is to feel hurt or angry and to want to strike out at those who cause the hurt or anger, so we fully understand the pain that a fictional character experiences.

One key to teaching literature is to guide students beyond the sometimes vast differences that they see between themselves and the characters in a book and toward what they have in common with them.  We can, simultaneously, look at the differences.  So perhaps you wouldn't have reacted as the person in the book did if the same thing happened to you.  Why is that?  What is different about the character's personality or character or motives that make him or her respond differently than you would?  Thus, whether we look at similarities or differences, analysis of fictional characters has the dual benefit of insight into ourselves and an understanding of how and why people different from ourselves behave.

In this respect, we learn about the human experience or about human behavior from reading about it in much the same way that we learn from life itself.  However, there is a significant difference.  Literature enables us to look into ourselves and out at the rest of humanity with a certain detachment that we don't have in real life, where we are concerned about consequences and outcomes.  We observe, and learn from, fictional relationships with the same objectivity that we have when reading a psychology textbook, but the stories are somehow more real and interesting than the clinical descriptions in the psych book are.

Another approach to literature that serves well in developing an appreciation of the literary classics is to regard them as a history of ideas.  To be sure, not every work has a philosophical intent or even an intellectual message.  A poem or story is not a treatise on the meaning of life, even though there are some incorrigible message-hunters who try to find profound messages in anything that has made its way into the pantheon of great literature ("Why else would it be a classic?" they ask).  Nonetheless, it is probably safe to say that every significant idea that has been produced in the history of mankind appears somewhere in classic literature, even if not every literary work has a "message" or "moral."  Many of these ideas recur with great frequency, even in works separated by hundreds of years.

Literature exposes us to new ideas and may put old ideas into a new perspective.  We may be startled to discover that issues and questions that we consider to be uniquely "modern" have been around for a very long time.  This is, incidentally, another way of finding relevance and universality in literary works:  questions about the nature and meaning of human existence that we are still pondering today have their antecedents long, long ago.

Human beings have a penchant for pondering imponderables – the meaning and purpose of existence, the nature of the human soul (and whether or not it exists), the relationship between us and the rest of the natural world, and so on.  Thinkers have always wonder about the lessons of the past and probabilities for the future.  The consideration of such questions is not confined to science, religion, and philosophy but manifests itself in the collective wisdom of literary classics – a continuum of the ideas of the most perceptive and articulate thinkers from the past into the present.

The subjects covered in literature are not limited to philosophical abstractions.  If we want to explore the impact of rapidly advancing technology on the way we live, for example, we may read something set at the time when the Industrial Revolution first took hold.  What we observe there has direct parallels to our current efforts to adapt to technological progress.  At the time, some saw the changes as a threat to our entire social structure, while others regarded them as representing the dawn of a new age.  Readers who can make connections may thus develop deeper insights into where we are now and where we may be going, for both sides were, in their way, right.  The Industrial Revolution did, like the computer revolution of more recent history, significantly alter social stricture and did mark the dawning of a new age.  This is but one example of how themes and concerns of the past relate to those of the present.

Beyond the "lessons" of literary works is an element that is difficult, if not impossible, to teach – the aesthetic or artistic element.  It is similar to what we call, in the jargon of commerce, the "value-added" camponent.  We can learn about the events of history, the ideas of philosophy, and the dynamics of human relationships by studying history, philosophy, and psychology textbooks.  We can come to know a great deal intellectually by these means, but our understanding may be greatly limited.  The difference between reading a detached report of an event and reading a literary work is that we become personally and emotionally involved in the latter.  Even though our experience is vicarious (it isn't "real"), the writer's art makes us feel as if it were real.  Some approaches to literature attempt to analyze how the author creates this effect, and, although such analyses may be interesting academically, they usually don't explain why the work has the impact that it does.  One doesn't "explain" by analyzing a beautiful sunset or a stormy sea why it moves us.  One just experiences it.  Furthermore, if someone else is unmoved by such experiences, there is probably little we can say that will change that person's reaction.

My favorite analogy to the artistic experience of literature is the experience of hearing inspired music because I derive a similar kind of indefinable joy from music as I do from reading.  I cannot even begin to explain why a magnificent performance of an equally magnificent piece of music moves me – nor can I persuade others who are unmoved by it that they shoud be moved.  Sometimes technical knowledge – for example, an understanding of how challenging it is to perform the piece well – enhances my appreciation, but it isn't necessary for me to have this knowledge to feel the power of the music.  Indeed, the kind of music I like best doesn't even have words to explain what it's about.  I am free to relate to it in whatever way I choose, to draw from it whatever I want, often experiencing feelings that I can't put into words.

Because it uses the medium of verbal language, literature is less abstract than music.  The closest that literature comes to music is poetry, although well-written prose contains many "poetic" elements.  It is not surprising that most people who appreciate classical music also appreciate literary classics because they have developed the aesthetic sense that makes such appreciation possible.

The relevance of literature to our own experiences, its universality, its art – these are the keys to appreciating literary classics.  Up to a point, this can be taught; beyond that, readers must draw from within themselves.  Those who are unwilling or unable to do so are unfortunate, going through life blind to some of the towering achievements of mankind, greater and more permanent than any physical structure.  Literary classics are bridges between the ages – bridges that will endure longer than those made of concrete and metal.