The Importance of Classic Books in High School English Curriculums

Classic literature has been a part of required reading lists in high school English classes for many generations, often to the yawn-inducing chagrin of disinterested students. These works of literature usually leave its students drowning in dictionaries in attempt to familiarize themselves with the alien language, oddly-formed sentences, and seemingly irrelevant subject matter and outdated themes. Classroom lectures and research papers with arbitrary word counts fuel their detachment. “How does this actually apply to my life?” they often ask.

Nevertheless, whether students of classic literature actually enjoys it or not, there’s no doubt that these stories are filled with timeless themes and strong morality. Classics can act as a friendly reminder to us in the modern age that our struggles, internal conflicts and emotions can pass the borders of both land and time.

In another sense, classics can also act as a testimony of how much we have developed and how in some ways, we humans managed to make sense of a world that often doesn’t make sense at all. while writing about it throughout that process.

It’s a scary time in America. We’re talking about books being banned in school. Here are 10 classics that are very popular in high school English classes and highlight the themes that prove that these classics are still relevant today — especially as we begin to navigate a post-Trump 21st century America.

 

Understanding Key Themes in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Even in the age of Black Lives Matter, school curriculums still do not shed enough light on the issue of racism and discrimination. There is little explicit discussion about the struggles that people of color have to face and the impact that structural racism has on our society, and to be sure, women and people of color are underrepresented on this list as a whole — it’s almost all Dead White Males.

Nevertheless, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird has always stood out as a cornerstone on required reading lists, thanks to directly addressing the topic of race through its impactful and engaging writing.

When we take into consideration that this book revolves around a wrongly convicted Black man persecuted by the police for a crime only based the color of his skin, it’s unfortunately obvious why this book is still relevant today. It is a grave representation of the cruel injustice that can be carried by people of authority under the cover of racial segregation.

There has been an alarming rise in racial discrimination in absurdly obvious forms like hate crimes and white supremacist rallies, and also in more subtle (but no less deadly) forms as racial discrimination in workplace, education, and opportunities afforded to Black people.

Published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird brilliantly and genuinely portrays the social problems of class, color, and gender in a time when highlighting the importance of courage, integrity and standing up for what’s right had consequences. They still do.

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Why Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a Staple in High School English Class

While To Kill A Mockingbird focuses on the harms of racial discrimination and how Black people are persecuted just for the color of their skin, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) focuses on the invisibility that Black people undergo and their struggles to create an identity that doesn’t revolve around their race.

The nameless narrator of this story travels from one community to the other, and each one of them forces a certain stereotype upon him while expecting him to meet their expectations. In places he’s expected to be uneducated and poor, others demand him to be filled with violence and anger towards the oppression that Black people face. Other spaces demand him to be rational, smart, and willing to negotiate the terms of his freedom in order to help claim a place between the whites in America. In each place wherever he is, the narrator is given a role to play — without any consideration to who he is and what feels right to him.

He struggles to create his own individual self when the world around him knocks him down for not meeting expectations, which sheds a light on the postcolonial state of slavery and the invisible shackles that bound Black people to their place and allows their growth only within limits set by white society.

He also introduces a new character opposing the protagonist that illustrates the unfortunate truth: the oppressed can sometimes confirm to their oppressor and adapt themselves in order to gain a fake sense of influence and strength.

It’s regrettable that the themes in this book that were deeply explored by Ralph Ellison fifty years ago can still be relatable to Black people today. Of course, race is still a central part of most Black people’s identity and the many harmful stereotypes impact their lives in ways that non-people of color cannot imagine. The presence of the Black Lives Matter movement have only begun to articulate these day-to-day frustrations.

Police brutality and hateful crimes against the Black community are the more obvious forms of racism that should be fought ruthlessly. But it’s just as important to keep an eye on the more subtle forms that hinders Black people’s growth, whether it’s personally or professionally. Invisible Man eloquently captures this sentiment, and it’s required reading for a reason.

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The Relevance of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger in Today’s Classroom

J.D. Salinger sheds a light on dismissing and overlooking serious mental health problems as regular teenage angst. In one sense, The Catcher in The Rye is thought of as an accurate display of teen angst and the sense of rebellion against social norms, but it’s also an example of how unaddressed trauma that is dismissed and neglected could pile up into something much bigger.

At first, a lot of Holden Caulfield’s behavior and depressive thoughts seem to be exaggerations made by a privileged teenage boy. And to be fair, he is very privileged; his parents live in Midtown Manhattan by Central Park and his lawyer father can clearly afford to send him to all the private schools he gets kicked out of. It’s quite easy and tempting to dismiss him as a spoiled brat.

But throughout the novel, we learn more about him and discover that he holds a lot of unprocessed emotions that he hadn’t properly resolved. Holden shows classic signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and fits the criteria of hyperarousal symptoms that are linked to PTSD. They show up in the form of insomnia, his (underage) drinking, his irritability, and his out-of-nowhere outbursts. He also experiences frequent feelings of depression and isolation, and he thinks about his late brother Allie often. When Holden speaks of his brother, it’s as if he’s still alive and while in times his tone holds sarcasm and lightness, it’s also heavy with guilt and sadness.

Another sign of PTSD is when Holden recalls his classmate committing suicide while wearing his sweater. Though he recalls this quite vividly, he mentions it pretty casually and almost in mere passing, despite the significant effect it has on him as a creeping shadow that appears in his unconscious whenever he attempts to feel joy. This incident is pretty much unrecognized as far as Holden’s consciousness is concerned, and most trained therapists wouldn’t let him get away with glossing over it so easily. A seemingly minor event that Holden doesn’t think is very significant is actually the catalyst for all of the destructive behavior that takes place in the book.

Today, we witness a noticeable increase in the conversations regarding mental health. A lot of people are much more comfortable reaching for help when they need and perhaps if J.D Salinger had written The Catcher in The Rye in the 21st century where therapy is much more normalized than it was when it was published in 1951, Holden wouldn’t be institutionalized, but instead getting help from regular sessions with a therapist that he sorely needed since his brother’s death.

For all the criticism about how the book romanticizes a petulant child from an affluent background, The Catcher in the Rye shows us how far we’ve come in the terms of addressing mental health and prove the pressing necessity of reaching out for help. Things are much better than before, maintaining the inclusivity of mental health care is a lot easier, and the tools are much more readily available today than they were in Holden’s time. He was certainly privileged, but he didn’t have the luxury of mental health and therapy being normalized.

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Critical Lessons from Animal Farm by George Orwell Every Student Should Learn

George Orwell wrote Animal Farm as a reflection of the Russian Revolution and Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship. In this novel, the pigs end up ruled by leader pigs that are very similar to the previous human government, which they rebelled against due to its exploitation and dictatorship. In that matter, Orwell correctly assessed the Soviet Union at that time — and there are many repeated themes that are still used by governments and accepted by susceptible portions of the population.

Nowadays, it is quite evident that we’re facing familiar troubles, not only in the United States (even if it’s more obvious than others), but globally as well. Tactics and crowd manipulations that are showed in the book are still being used to this day.

In the novel, we witness the brainwashing of the crowds through an empty slogan: “four legs good, two legs bad.” As any student of propaganda can tell you, slogans are an effective tool that can be echoed easily through a thoughtless crowd. For example, today we have the problematic “Make America Great Again,” a phrase loaded with hidden and not-so-hidden meanings continuously repeated by Trump supporters that depends heavily on image enhancement and market reach even though the actions and ideologies not only fail to meet the main message, but also contradict it.

However, an equally powerful and alarming tool that is still used by dictators globally is the creation of imaginary threats, and fear is a powerful method that wanna-be dictatorships — like Trump and the pigs in Animal Farm — harness to keep their people in a state of heightened loyalty and hesitance to show any sort of opposition to the current government.

In times of danger, the people realize the importance of uniting powers, listening to orders, and putting a brave solidified front against external threats. The tactic of creating a fake state of danger to maintain the silence of the government’s critiques has been — and still is — one of the most effective methods that governments use to gain power and a sense of stability over their throne. Animal Farm captures this perfectly in a hyper-fictionalized barnyard ecosystem, with “Orwellian” becoming a prevalent adjective to describe our society.

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The Cultural Impact of 1984 by George Orwell in Modern Education

Another prophetic Orwellian story is 1984, which is perhaps more influential than Animal Farm. It tells the story of a dystopian society that is under constant surveillance by a faceless authoritative figure called Big Brother. This world that Orwell created is one where every member of the population is being watched.

Perhaps a much bigger horror in this dystopian society might be considered in the stripping of meaning from words. The authority attempts to eradicate words and ideas that defy the ones put forth by the ruling figure — and even thinking something inside your own mind that is non-confirmative to their ideologies is considered a “thoughtcrime.” This method is in attempt to make its citizens incapable of reaching a proper understanding of the world and further indulging the lies they’re being fed.

In 1984, the protagonist’s first crime was the simple act of writing a diary while hiding from the surveillance cameras, a crime outrageous enough that it made him eligible for the death penalty in this fictional world.

While today’s society doesn’t exactly criminalize individual thoughts, there are still many parts of the world that face the consequences of their government’s censorship over what is allowed to reach the population through television, newspapers, and websites. In this case, censorship might be a form of stripping meaning from words and controlling the ideologies of the people, which Orwell foresaw. Luckily, this censorship does not result in a bleak thoughtless community as the one present in Orwell’s dystopian society since today’s modern technology makes it hard to reach full censorship, but the fact that it’s a desired aim by many governments should be taken into consideration.

Of course, the themes of surveillance might be more relevant today than ever before. Big Brother isn’t just watching us anymore – he’s listening to our calls, watching us on camera, following us on social media, tracking our spending habits, and knows exactly what we like and don’t like.

While CCTV cameras are a prevalent method of surveillance, it’s hardly necessary in an age where people willingly share every detail of their life by allowing popular websites and apps to track their location, access their contacts, and peek around cherished photos on their phones.

Our data is sold to companies and even if one might think that their data is worthless and thinks nothing of giving it away for nothing, we should keep in mind that a lot of companies are willing to pay large amounts of money just to get their hands on it.

By collecting data about individuals, you get a sense about the identities that this data represents, gaining information about the population as a whole. These characteristics can be used for marketing purposes to get us to buy certain products but more dangerously, be used for more nefarious aims like pushing certain political candidates — a tactic that is believed to have helped Trump win the 2016 presidential election.

Big Brother is no longer some shadowy theoretical and abstract, absent figure. He is virtually present with us at all times — often literally in the grip of our hands. Orwell saw this coming more than half a century ago.

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Lessons in Humanity: The Diary of Anne Frank in Today’s Classrom

Anne Frank practiced the ordinary act of a young girl writing her diary under the most extraordinary circumstance — the worst genocide ever recorded. Translated into over 70 languages and selling more than 50 million copies, this book is a mixture of an adult’s ability to reflect with a child’s poignant sense of sweetness. She writes about escaping persecution until her life was unfortunately cut short when her and the majority of her family’s lives were robbed by the Nazi regime.

Today, we are unfortunately still in desperate need of powerful and impactful books like The Diary of Anne Frank. Anne and her family were a victim of hatred and prejudice, two things that still exist very widely in today’s society despite the decades of time gap.

Discrimination and injustice didn’t just magically disappear after World War II and it still continues to this day in many forms. In fact, one of the most horrifying displays of history repeating itself is the criminal detention camps located in Texas near the Mexico border to discourage immigration, as well as the concentration camps of the Uyghur Muslims in China, which seemed to take the Nazi regime as a blueprint to follow.

When we see anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, white supremacist allies, hateful speech, and anti-immigrant acts, we need to remember Anne Frank and take action to stop hate from stealing more people’s lives.

Anne Frank wrote to keep her memories immortal. She’s done her part and our part as a society is summed up in the act of remembering and deciding to take action. In the honor of those who perished in massacres performed by the German Nazis during the Holocaust, we must actively work on making a difference.

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The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and its Role in Developing Literary Skills

After a bank forced the Joads out of their farm in The Grapes of Wrath (1939), the family headed west searching for the remnants of the American dream in sunny California. There they are met with thousands just like them, living in extreme poverty while being exploited by the rich for less than the bare necessities. With little breath in them, they fight back.

In our current day and age, it’s very hard to read The Grapes of Wrath without making connections to the Great Recession and financial crisis that started in 2007. And although America hasn’t known an economic hardship quite as severe the Great Depression, a lot of people might argue that history is getting very close to repeating itself today.

Unfortunately, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath will always probably be relevant in the terms of the accurate deception of a country divided by wealth, as long as there are low-wage jobs and insurmountable wage gaps between the haves and have-nots.

We can also make direct comparisons of the storyline of the Joad family to the story of recent immigrants. Today, recent immigrants are the most exploited workers that suffer from horrendous work conditions, ranging from wage theft, labor law violations, social discrimination, and life-threatening, back-breaking work conditions, all themes Steinbeck touched upon.

There is also a striking resemblance in the matter of income inequality, which is today at its highest since 1920s. Today, low-paying jobs without benefits and carrying student loan debt have been normalized, and there has been little accountability for the mortgage industry that preys on the vulnerability of housing as a basic right — which makes Steinbeck’s embodiment of the banks as greedy hungry monsters quite accurate.

Still, The Grapes of Wrath presents another timeless theme: everlasting hope in the face of despair. Widely read upon its release in 1939 (it even won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction), Steinbeck’s book doesn’t push us to lose hope, but it does push us to focus our wrath at those who want to take our hope away from us.

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Analyzing the Impact of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Another book that presents the dark side of the American Dream is one that exemplifies the Great American Novel more than perhaps any other: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which takes place in the so-called Roaring Twenties and the golden age of excess before the Great Depression.

This particular era, despite being romanticized, witnessed a peak of materialism and greed where race and classes divided society, so it’s only natural that the characters were greatly dedicated to their social statuses. After all, it was a key ingredient to their lifestyles, livelihoods, and personalities.

In fact, one of the main points of The Great Gatsby revolved around Gatsby’s devotion to this lifestyle and his obsession of not just wealth, but to display it in the form of extravagant parties. Although Gatsby’s aim to win Daisy’s heart might be considered romantic and noble, he is alternately a victim and perpetrator of materialism.

As materialism plays a vital role in the novel’s essence an revolves greatly around the conflict between morals and desires, it’s easy to see how its themes are still relevant till today.

In this day and age, dreams are often use as a synonym of financial success. Whether it’s obtained by vain fame or countless hours of working in the office to climb the corporate ladder, success is defined by your income and assets — while completely overlooking the methods used to obtain it or the morals that were sacrificed in the process.

Another interesting theme in The Great Gatsby that can still be considered relevant today is the obsession of creating a persona, and working ruthlessly on the way we are presented to the public. Today, perhaps more than ever in the age of TikTok and Instagram, people are simultaneously devoted to and struggling with creating a “better” identity. It has been a hero’s errand to “reinvent yourself” and create a completely new persona that we may think would be appreciated and perceived better — mostly by people we’ve never met and don’t even know.

These fake personas can be as authentic and genuine as we please, and sometimes completely unrelated to who we are. We witness this in elaborate Instagram stories where people show off their access to wealth and opulence — all for likes and internet fame. When we don’t have access to the appearance of such things, we catfish and create fake social media profiles that can sometimes be more time-consuming to cultivate than our real selves, and people go through extreme measures to create this well-calculated persona in order to win their Daisy.

In the end, despite Gatsby’s willingness to go an elaborate length to obtain the American dream, it leads ultimately to his death.

The Great Gatsby might be one of the first classics to challenge the stereotype that anyone can get anything — and be anyone — if they work hard enough and their intentions are pure. That alone can be an argument of its relevance today, but understanding the consequences of being anyone other than your true self is arguably even more important.

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Critical Lessons from Lord of the Flies by William Golding

William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies tells the story of twelve young boys who become stranded on an uninhabited island and forced by their new reality into forming a mini-society. With no adults and no rules, things gradually evolve into complete chaos.

Lord of the Flies almost certainly set the path for more stories and TV shows — think Survivor — of this sort, and it’s quite intriguing when we realize that there’s not much of a difference between this book and a popular show like Survivor.

The truth is, if this story took place around the same twelve boys stranded on an island in today’s world, it would still revolve around its main themes of order, chaos, survival, and sacrifice.

The relevance of Lord of the Flies in the current day is not just a lesson to us that barbarity can get the best of us when it comes to matters of survival, it also sheds the light on a philosophical debate about whether people are inherently good or evil, and if a good person can maintain their morals and integrity in the cruelest conditions.

Barbarity is obviously present in all animals but us humans are the only ones that are able to control our actions and behave in a civilized and ethical manner. However, where is the line at which we lose that sense of control and our brutality shows up, seemingly unannounced? In the book, dangerous prejudices against two of the most sensible characters were bullied and had their ideas shut down, eventually being killed.

Lord of the Flies is a picture of our society today and shows how much darkness can pour out of us as humans when the restraints are lifted, law no longer applies and there will be no consequences for your actions. In some ways, this can be reflected on the amount of hate speech and inflammatory rhetoric that people feel comfortable to display under anonymous names online when they know they won’t suffer any consequences. 

Unfortunately, today we often find moral righteousness of ethical causes shrugged off by the majority of people as they indulge their worst impulses. At difficult times, people often give themselves a free pass to overlook the moral side of their actions. In the end, the young men in Lord of the Flies did what they had to do to survive — but it came at the price of their humanity.

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Exploring Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the time that Nathaniel Hawthorne published The Scarlet Letter 1850, the concept of feminism wasn’t nearly as defined and articulated as it is today, which makes it quite groundbreaking in English literature. The main character is a complex combination between conformation to traditional ideologies and the kind of behavior that a woman is expected to display — while simultaneously showing a sense of rebellion and resilience that might be considered a very early version of feminism.

In this story, a woman called Hester belongs to a colonial Puritan society. She takes part in adulterous behavior resulting in the birth of an illegitimate child, for which she is punished by wearing a scarlet letter A on her chest.

While Hester’s conformity to this punishment might be seen as compliance to the community’s ideologies, it can also be considered a form of silent rebellion and resilience in the face of determination to keep her child. She is one of the earliest representations in literature of a single mother who works and provides for her daughter, a model that could easily relate to many women today.

Besides the themes of feminism, there are other reasons that still make this classic relevant today. The idea of public shaming has a direct connection to social media today. In the rise of so-called cancel culture, public opinion seems to have a huge influence over how a person is perceived, sometimes ruining lives and careers if they don’t confirm to certain social norms. Hester experiences a 19th-century version of slut-shaming.

While the idea of cancel culture might seem productive as it sometimes sheds the light on dangerous behaviors like sexual predators or racist public figures, where do we draw the line on accepting the majority’s collective opinion as a good enough reason to “cancel” a person?

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Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In many ways put forth by the books discussed here, it’s clear that no matter how much our world and society changes, great literature can still represent that some things will always stay the same. In the times of uncertainty, hardships, ruthless governments, and societal conflicts, people go to art and literature in an attempt to make some sense of a chaotic world. The idea of our feelings and thoughts being similar to those who lived a long time before us can give us a sense of immortality and reminds us that we’re never alone with our struggles — while simultaneously forcing us to notice how far we’ve come and how far we can still go.

Looking for more content about books and literature? Check out our series of fun facts about literature superstars, including Mary Shelley, Philip K. Dick, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and Oscar Wilde.

Image Credit: Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

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