Enduring classics

For those of you who find English classes to be the spawn of all that is evil, I’m sure the first question asked when beginning a new book is, “Why do we have to read this?” It’s a common enough question, often one with more than one meaning. It could be you’re asking to figure out why the book relates to a certain theme of a class or perhaps to elicit a response from your professor as to why this book has any importance to your life. English classes in college cover more specific genres or topics of literature, but in high school it was all about the dreaded classics.

Picture your generic high school English class. A weary teacher stands in front of twenty or so bored-looking students, droning on an on about the subjective imagery in "Moby Dick" (1851). We’ve all been there, even those of us who, like me, love all things literature-related. When discussing books that have existed for decades and have been ripped apart in every direction imaginable, it’s hard to read a classic for the first time and really develop an individual opinion on it. A lot of contemporary literature is compared to classics, forcing even the least frequent readers to have a basic understanding of stories like "Hamlet" (1604), "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1960) and "Wuthering Heights" (1847) in order to get the full message from a modern novel.

But what makes a book classic? For one, some of these books have been around for more than a century. Books that are viewed as classics are preserved for a reason. Some make certain statements applicable to more than the time period during which they were written. Others are so beautifully written that they provide an almost cinematic quality to the reading experience. Classics define how the world was during the time they were written, but they also demonstrate the connectivity between people across the years. We like to think we’re much more evolved as a species than our ancestors, but classic literature often proves we still have a lot of growing to do.

Then there’s the obvious fact that most classics are extremely well-written. Often authors’ first literary attempts are their best, especially if they experience something that perfectly defines a characteristic of humanity. Some of my all-time favorite books are considered classics, including but not limited to, "1984" (1949), "Slaughterhouse Five" (1969), "The Catcher in the Rye" (1951) and "Jane Eyre" (1847). Aside from their beautiful writing, these books are vastly different. Classics don’t just have to spend three pages metaphorically describing the relationship between the sky and the ground; they can create new worlds, new ideas and new perspectives.

Classics are defined as books of the past, and even the newer ones were published at least fifteen years ago. It does take time for books to circulate, but it seems odd there are no books published in the last few years that are shelved in Barnes & Nobles’ “Classics to Read in a Lifetime” collection. It could be the very basic stories of romance, tragedy and drama have already been written, making it very difficult for current authors to come up with little more than a variation of something that’s been done a thousand times over. Certainly books defined as classics also change over time, and some eventually lose their effectiveness with their readers. Every reader gets a different experience out of each one, and that experience could change with an additional read through. It takes some detective work and exploration to find the ones that reach through the divide of time to speak most clearly.