English teachers and librarians often lament their students’ disinclination toward classical literature, specifically, anything written before the 20th century. Not only do they believe that today’s young adults need the short, snappy, immediate (if you can call it that) prose of cell phone text messages, but they will no longer read classic literature on their own, for pleasure, unless assigned, and even then, teachers are forced to prove against cliff notes and search the Internet for evidence of plagiarized documents. With random predictions predicting the doom of paper and the fall of traditional libraries, is it a waste of time to subject teenagers to the likes of Homer and other historical authors during this information age where small information is the rule? of the day?

For many students, who do not hesitate to complain, the language of the writers of the past is too harsh. Since people no longer speak and write the way Shakespeare and Jane Austen did, it makes little sense for them to study these archaic modes of communication. After all, they could be developing Power Point presentations that are sure to be something more relevant to their future. Of course, the “too hard” theory is something English teachers should never succumb to or accept when rushing to defend the centuries-old literature. The vast majority of students may not become experts in medieval literature, but everyone can benefit from self-discipline from reading othello, BeowulfPrayed Crime and Punishment provides.

Although surely, self-discipline is a timeless trait that goes beyond a study of English literature; it could be drawn from a myriad of other disciplines such as geometry, computer programming, graphic design, etc. So, coming to the question of relativity, are works of classical literature still relevant to high school students today when, as the statistics show? , is it so reading modern record-breaking texts like Harry Potter and the Twilight Serie? And certainly, people all over the world (and we can also speak globally these days) are reading the 175,000 books that publishers publish annually; they certainly wouldn’t be publishing books of any kind if no one bought them.

A portion of these 175,000 published books are paperback reprints of bestselling books, many of which turn out to be classics (at least for now). But rather than stray into the virtual world of statistics, it may be helpful to revisit some classics to verify their value firsthand, or at least through the lens of this article. The following classics continue to be relevant in terms of content and more for people today.

moby dickby Herman Melville symbolizes the fear of teenagers trapped in American literature classes everywhere. Why, when neither of them likes to go whaling, should they spend weeks reading and discussing this particular piece of work that seems so far removed from their contemporary lives? There could be a discussion about why the novel is uniquely important to the founding of American literature, but the novel’s sheer relevance can be summed up as a study of good and evil, humanity’s relationship with nature, and humanity. need to successfully interact with fellow humanity. His themes are timeless and no one has managed to convey them as deeply as Melville did with this particular work.

In 1995, South Carolina-born Susan Smith was convicted of murdering her three-year-old and fourteen-month-old sons, tying them to the back seat of a car and driving to a ramp at a lake where she released the brake and watched the car she deliberately plunged into the water with her children and sank. Theories abounded about the gruesome murders, but a disgruntled murderer and a new man were part of her life at the time of the incident. In 431 B.C. C., the ancient Greek tragedian Euripides first produced the drama medea. Medea’s character does the unthinkable: she kills her own children to steal the offspring from her unfaithful husband. Horror, in its inexplicable forms, is still a part of human civilization, and what better way to bring down its motivations than within the harmless pages of a book? And why not start at the beginning of Western literature with a poet who cataloged human motivation like no other.

Teen pregnancy is not a new concept; If you had asked Thomas Hardy in the late 19th century, he could tell you all about Tess and how a youthful indiscretion resulted in a pregnancy that indirectly led to her own eternal death. Nor is Hardy’s text an accusation against promiscuity; in fact, he favored Tess out of all of her classic heroines. Instead, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, written at the end of the Victorian era, is an indictment against society, religion, and the people in Tess’s life who shunned her with their morality, a rejection that resulted in her downfall. It’s true that Victorians, even late Victorians like Hardy, tended to be wordy and to use English vocabulary on a large scale, but little can rival the power of Hardy’s heroine except, perhaps, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote his own short story. American. titled fallen woman the scarlet letter. Should adolescent girls think about the ramifications of unplanned pregnancy in the 21st century? Millions are spent on educating them; there’s no reason Hardy and Hawthorne can’t help.

But before this examination turns into a discussion of fallen literary women, consider the relativity of a character like Homer’s Achilles appearing in the iliad. Forget the fact that he is the son of a goddess (Thetis, Greek goddess of the sea); Today’s vampire-loving, fantasy-fed teens will fall for it anyway. Achilles is a warrior sent to Troy to fight the ten-year conflict he took to win back Helen, the Angelina Jolie of the ancient world. Achilles, in his grievance for a fallen comrade, breaks the rules of warfare and damages his own sense of honor. With the United States currently at war in multiple places, a study of Achilles is not only relevant, but possibly essential and possibly always will be as long as peace remains an elusive state.

Fortunately, the ancient Greek texts of the iliad they are adapted to English, but fussy English teachers still require students to read Shakespeare in its original form. His real writers no longer write in iambic pentameter, except by chance and even then it falls under the radar, but the Bard’s characters are as relative today as they ever were. For example, King Lear raises a pass from ungrateful daughters. Loyalty, betrayal, villainy, love affairs, these are often at the heart of Shakespeare’s plays and never go out of style despite the language barrier. Once students master the language, most of the time they are fascinated by the connection they have with the story through this language and how the characters remind them of themselves and others.

And maybe that’s what it all comes down to: reading others, others who, thus far, have stood the test of time. When adolescents read and discuss characters, they make judgments that could and probably will influence their own judgments as adults. There are many jokes and quotes that warn against misunderstanding history as those who don’t understand it are doomed to repeat it. Classical literature is relevant because it offers readers the opportunity to empathize deeply, understand in detail, and disconnect from their own universe for a while. Disconnecting from technology can bring calm, discipline, and freshness to minds that seem born to multitask. Certainly one can scream the modern relevance of a host of classics from pride and prejudice a moby dick. Until children develop their own taste for literature, they might like to eat their vegetables; they need to do it because it is good for them.

2011 Moira G Gallaga