“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” “And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Lines like these, from “A Tale of Two Cities,” “Emma” and “The Great Gatsby” have tugged at the hearts and minds of readers since they were written centuries ago. Despite the dust the book covers collect, the resonance of the writing is fresh.
While the language of the classics takes time to adjust to, that language becomes even more beautiful for the effort put forth into understanding it. Pushing through a classic is a workout for your brain, as well as a much-needed separation from endlessly scrolling on your phone.
When was the first time you read a ‘classic,’ and was it in class with little to no preparation to comprehend, let alone enjoy, the language? Did you feel like the story had no genuine connection to your life and somebody was forcing you to read something an old white person wrote without considering your personal interests or background?
I was raised surrounded by these old, dusty books, and they are part of the architecture of my life. I grew up immersed in the language of history by the educators in my family, which gave me a longing to understand it.
Students without that baseline of love for old works are often shoved into class with stacks of books plunked in front of them and commanded to read them with no care if they enjoy it or not in the name of ‘education.’ This is the cause of the hatred toward many classics: people feel like they are confusing for no reason and bear no resemblance to things people experience in this century.
It holds true for me, too. There have been plenty of classics I’ve been forced to read in class that I hated (it turns out middle school was too early to try “Lord of the Flies”).
It takes me a lot of effort to dig into many of these older works — including Dickens, who I genuinely enjoy — and I have often wondered how people in the past could devour these books as much as they did. One explanation is that attention spans used to be longer.
According to an article by Time, phones and the instant gratification of social media provide a quick dopamine release, creating constant situations in which “your brain gets used to constant diversions and engages in them out of habit — hence why you might find yourself mindlessly checking your phone even as you watch your favorite television show.” We can’t even focus on the movies we choose to watch without picking up our phones.
A 2012 study from Michigan State University demonstrated that when students read Jane Austen while connected to an MRI machine, “blood flow was increased in areas of the brain far beyond those responsible for what cognitive scientists call ‘executive function,’ regions normally associated with tasks that require close attention, such as studying, doing complex math problems or reading intensely.”
Like so many other things we go through in school, part of the answer to “Why do we have to read old books” is it teaches you how to think and strengthens your ability to do so. It takes effort to read these books, and that effort is worth the time because it breaks the social media cycle of eye candy for deeper truth. I have been taking months to read “Little Dorrit” by Dickens, and every time I pick it up even for 15 minutes, I’m proud of myself for taking the time to exercise my brain. I try to enjoy it — even the slow parts.
That said, plenty of older works are no longer acceptable by today’s standards. Lots of these books are filled with racism, sexism and a general sense of time gone by that simply doesn’t resonate anymore.
Not every classic needs to be revisited. Some were revolutionary for their time and are, now, more than welcome to stay there. More students would likely enjoy classics if more works by authors of color and women were featured in required reading, and the classics should expand to include them.
But taking the time to read a book that has some objectionable content means, as a group, students can examine it and say, “What is wrong with this, and why is it important we talk about it now?”
Books such as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” have a lot wrong with them in terms of understanding race and racist characters, but it was a revolutionary novel in American history. While we don’t need to celebrate it, forgetting it entirely means we run the risk of someone writing something like it again, and students need to understand why that’s a problem.
Curriculum should not shy away from the flaws of literature; it should examine them. If a character is racist, that must be acknowledged instead of brushed under the rug, and space should be made for students to express their discomfort with it. The attitude that books should be dismissed because they contain uncomfortable content is what has led to book bans in the first place. History needs to be remembered; it does not need to be glorified.
These classic works represent who we were before and who we are now, with all our flaws and glory. We also quote them every day, whether we like it or not. According to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, “his works provide the first recorded use of over 1,700 words in the English language,” including “critic,” “gossip” and “rant,” to name a few, and he also featured one of the earliest uses of the word “alligator.” Keep banning books, Florida.
“Shakespeare: For All Time” by Stanley Wells in Kraemer Family Library. Photo by Josiah Dolan.