I was thinking the other day about the books that I read in high school and how those shaped my future reading and how I analyze novels now. I know that there were a lot of different genres that we read, but a lot of the books that I remember reading were classic novels which may have sparked my love of classics now.
I was going to make just one post about this, but I thought of quite a few books that impacted me that we read in school so I decided to break this into two posts.
Title: The Great Gatsby
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: April 10th, 1925
Genres: Tragedy, Fiction
My Rating: 4.5/5
Opening: In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, " just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
Standout Quote: “I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
This book is pretty easily one of my favorite books that I read in high school. It is a classic, albeit newer than many other novels in the same category. I remember sitting at my desk and the teacher read this one aloud, stopping nearly every paragraph to point out some sort of symbolism or analogy. It took Fitzgerald nearly two years to write this book despite being only 110 pages long which is indicative of exactly how much thought he put into every little detail.
Nick Carraway moves to West Egg in New York for business and gets in touch with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan. Daisy is central to the novel in that she is married to Tom but is also the love interest of Jay Gatsby, a wealthy man who throws lavish parties in hopes of catching her attention. The novel is rife with affairs and as a tragedy, ends in death.
I feel that this book helped me to understand how to analyze a novel: how to pinpoint an author's use of symbolism and metaphor and taught me about writing in general. This is a novel that I hope will continue to be read in schools.
Title: Lord of the Flies
Author: William Golding
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Publication Date: September 17th, 1954
Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Allegory
My Rating: 2/5
Opening: The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon. Though he had taken off his school sweater and trailed it now from one hand, his grey shirt stuck to him and his hair was plastered to his forehead. All round him the long scar smashed into the jungle was a bath of heat. He was clambering heavily among the creepers and broken trunks when a bird, a vision of red and yellow, flashed upwards with a witch-like cry; and this cry was echoed by another.
Standout Quote: “We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?"
I'm going to be frank, I really didn't like this book. If we're being completely honest, fourteen-year-old me hated it. I felt that the boys savage behavior was unbelievable and scary. Could kids really act that way without adults around? Would they really relish in the killing of a pig? Would they truly murder one of their own within a week of being unsupervised? I was mortified reading this when I was young, not only because of the plot, but also because of the goriness of some of the events.
I tried to pick it up again as an adult because I wondered if a book could really be that horrible, especially one that is hailed as a classic. Unfortunately, it still was. In my opinion, the characters are basic and undeveloped, I'm still not sure if there is really a plot, and I felt that the savagery of people given a lack of rules is incredibly overstated. It seems to me that the author must have had a very rudimentary and negative view of human nature overall.
However, the reason I give this book two stars instead of one is because of the authors intention. This book is about a group of boys on a deserted island, but not really. It is often discussed as a biblical allegory with the island representing the garden of Eden and the boys' behavior as that of human behavior in biblical times with everything provided to them yet they still sin. One aspect of the novel that points to this is the title in which "Lord of the Flies" is a direct translation to "Beelzebub" which is the Hebrew word for Satan leading scholars to believe that this book is based in religion. Another allegorical way that it is often viewed is related to the politics of the time. The island is representative of the world and Jack and Ralph each represent a different political party and the ultimate downfall of the kids on the island may represent Golding's belief that the government was failing. Whichever theory you happen to believe about the book, I think that in an allegorical sense, Lord of the Flies is made more interesting as a parallel to either religion or politics and it speaks to the thought the author put into writing it, which for me, brings my opinion of the book from a one-star to a two-star.
Overall though, I really didn't enjoy it and honestly don't think that I agree with reading it in schools.
Title: Of Mice and Men
Author: John Steinbeck
Publisher: Covici Friede
Publication Date: 1937
Genre: Fiction, Tragedy
My Rating: 5/5
Opening: A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees - willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter’s flooding; and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool.
Standout Quote: “The best laid scheme of mice and men go oft awry.”
I enjoyed this book quite a lot in high school and read it again a couple of years back. The main characters are George and Lennie who travel around to different ranches looking for work during the Great Depression. George is practical and smart while Lennie is portrayed as having a disability and is more emotional than George. However, this is a tragedy and the entire premise of the book can be summed up by the quote above: "The best laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry." Each of the characters in the book are well developed and have their own goals and plans, yet many, if not all of them are interrupted by, well... life.
Since reading this is high school, I have come back to that quote time and again, realizing that I am not entirely in control in life and that that's okay. None of us are. This was one of the novels that really makes you feel and think. One that you go back to time and again because it helps you to see the big picture in your own circumstances. Of Mice and Men is a novel I very much appreciated reading and would hope that schools would keep in the curriculum.
Wow, well that wraps that up! I'm realizing that these three novels that I reflected on today are ALL tragedies. I'm not sure if that's indicative of a theme of books chosen to be read in school or if I personally remember the tragedies more than any others. I do have a few more that I'd like to go over though in a future post, hopefully at least one of them isn't a tragedy!
What are your thoughts? Did you have any books that you read in high school that you loved? Any that you hated? Tell me about them in the comments and thanks for reading!
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