High School: Part 1

I started thinking about high school the other day and this disturbed me to some extent.  I typically avoid that train of thought because that time is only slightly better for my mental health than junior high.  But my mind went around towards that, specifically English classes.  The novels were fascinating, but even more interesting to me were some of the discussions that came out of it.

I took an Honors English class my Freshman year and these are all the books I remember that our class read: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck; Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare; Lord of the Flies by William Golding; All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque; "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell; Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.

Except for that last book I mentioned, all of these stories had one thing in common and halfway through, one of the girls in class vented on our teacher about it.  "Why are we reading all these stories about people dying?"

Our teacher hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, then said, "I hate to break it to you, but people die."

So?  I didn't say anything but I thought she'd asked a really good question and his answer did not suffice.  Why were we being forced to read these awful, horrible tragedies?  I was more of reader than most of the class.  I actually enjoyed reading some of the stories while others in the class were bored to death with them.  Many just found the SparkNotes for these books when they could.

But even though I appreciated some of the beautiful writing in some of these (I've gone on to read several of John Steinbeck's books since then and have enjoyed most of them) I was with her on the point.  I already knew people died.  My grandma (who was really my second mom) passed away when I was in fourth grade and I could still remember how much that had hurt then.  But just because these things happen in real life, why does that mean I want to experience that painful emotion, even in a fictitious environment?

The books I read dealt with death (Harry Potter was starting to move along by that point) and I was into several sci-fi and fantasy stuff, and I grew up on mysteries.  Violence is not a foreign subject.  But none of them dwelt on death the way that these stories do.  Romeo and Juliet (my least favorite Shakespeare play, by the way) kills off a quarter of the cast by the end; everybody dies in All Quiet; we watch 12-year-olds become murderers in Lord of the Flies; Rainsford and Zaroff are both simply cruel; and George had to be the one to put Lenny down.  These are some of the most miserable tragedies ever.  Why were we reading them?  What were we learning?  That no matter what happens or how hard the struggle is, despite careful planning or sheer will, we'll still fail?

It was so ironic every classroom has posters on the walls with slogans to tell us REACH FOR THE STARS, YOU CAN DO IT and NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE! while the books we were forced to read sent the complete opposite message.  Far as I could tell, these authors were just mad at the world.

So why?

I can't speak for anybody else but here's what I got out of it.  Except for All Quiet, every bad thing that happened was the result of each individual choices.  The things that they did were senseless and showed me the type of person that I don't want to be.  I was shown a list of actions that I never wanted to take and have structured my life so that I won't have to experience those things.

All Quiet was different in that the hero was stuck in a situation he couldn't escape but he still stood up and remained as honorable as he knew how to be throughout.  I hope that if I was ever in a nightmare that he lived in that I would bear up as well as he did, despite knowing that death would only result.

So these books weren't a waste for me.  Am I glad that I read them?  Not entirely.  Like I said, I can't stand Romeo and Juliet and Lord of the Flies still bothers me, even though I haven't touched the book in years.  Of Mice and Men did introduce me to Steinbeck but it is nowhere being my favorite book of his.  That would be Cannery Row.

The real question that goes unanswered: people have been complaining for years that the youth of America doesn't read enough.  May I ask how any of the books that I was made to read encouraged us that books were a good use of our time?