Required reading?

[fuyuko_neko]

 You know, I cannot for the life of me figure out why English/literature professors pick some of the books that the do as required reading for a course. Then again, I have found over the years that I prefer a 'selection list' - wherein students choose their own book or books to read off of a list and then have to do class work from those. You can

Comments

You have not read To Kill? Fix that. Now.

[laryna6]

To Kill a Mockingbird contains Atticus Finch. He's at the top of the '100 greatest movie heroes of all time' list of this major critics group, and that's just the movie version. A small town lawyer is one of the greatest fictional heroes of all time. That man defines what heroism is, and there are a lot more fundamental truths than that in this thing.

To Kill is, on the surface, a slice of life in the south, but that also describes Huckleberry Finn (...before the point at which it gets hijacked by a Tom Sawyer who has apparently lost all of his character development). And To Kill is greater literature than Huckleberry Finn at his best.

I normally place absolutely no stock in so-called great literature. There's science fiction nowadays that makes Brave New World seem like the kind of thing that assumed there was life on Mars, in terms of accuracy with human nature. Generally, literature improves over time, since people stand on the shoulders of giants.

But To Kill a Mockingbird needs to be read. Read it. If it weren't for the existence of The Phantom Tollbooth, I would consider To Kill the... most necessary to read/take in book ever written/piece of art ever produced.