Lessons from four years of reading

After nearly four years of high school English classes, it takes me a minute to recall the books I read my freshman year. Before classic novels like To Kill A Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men, I can remember we read the play Oedipus the King. On the first day of the unit, there was one question we were assigned to answer: What is a tragic hero? Tragic heroes, we established, are many things. They come from noble stature, their downfall is their own fault, and, most importantly, they emerge from tragedy with a greater self-knowledge. At the end of the play, Oedipus wasn’t the only one with a greater awareness; I, too, had learned something valuable about human nature. As the months and years went on, I spent, cumulatively, more than a few days of my life reading for English class. Looking back at each story, poem, and book that I read, there is not a single one that I didn’t finish with a greater awareness than when I started.

Year One

Reading To Kill A Mockingbird as a freshman, Harper Lee introduced me to Scout Finch. Seeing the story though Scout’s nine-year-old eyes, I felt like I was learning new lessons and growing up just as she was. I learned that understanding comes from placing yourself in someone else’s shoes, not from external judgment. Harper Lee put me on a porch with Atticus Finch, who taught me that courage, in any circumstances, comes from effort, character, and good intentions.

Year Two

Moving on to sophomore year, one of the two books I read over summer vacation was Fahrenheit 451. I was freaked out by the robotic dogs and flamethrowers scattered throughout, but at the end of the day Ray Bradbury opened my eyes to the startling image of the void that is left when we are no longer allowed the freedom of ideas or expression. After years of reading book after book for school and for leisure, it really hadn’t crossed my mind that these were freedoms I was lucky to have. He taught me that the only way I could love books was to read them. Later that year, we tackled the classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I was skeptical of any narrator who was the same age as the kids I babysat, but Twain’s choice of protagonist gave a voice to our history that I had never heard in my history classes. Huck’s innocence and charm made me realize that it wasn’t just the old, white men who perpetuated slavery. Not even the good guys – Huck, Tom, and sweet Aunt Sally – were immune to the mindset ingrained in their culture.

Year Three

About halfway through my junior year, we began reading Love Medicine, a novel by Louise Erdrich that explores the lives of two Native American families over many generations. On the very first page inside the novel was a complex family tree. The image of so many lines joining, parting, and overlapping was enough to make us gawk. Ultimately, Louise Erdrich showed me that each of these lines was a side to a story. Each and every perspective, whether pleasant, uncomfortable, or just confusing, came together to form a whole understanding deeper than any one point of view. Instead of looking at the individual who cheated on their wife or the one who coped too recklessly with their grief, I learned to look at the connections of love and loss that wove their storylines together and created a family.

Year Four

A couple of months ago, my English class read Beloved by Toni Morrison. Sethe, the novel’s main character, is a woman constantly drawn into her past and haunted by memories she cannot erase. By constructing the novel in a way that blurs the distinctions between observations of the present and memories of the past, Morrison showed me the inextricable nature of the two. While some of Sethe’s darker memories left me speechless, Morrison showed me that these low points of fear or rage mix with moments of love and happiness to create an honest picture of human life.