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The greatest lesson you've learned from classical fiction?
I am currently enjoying a very thought-provoking semester of American Literature. Prior to this class, I wouldn't have considered fiction as useful in my everyday life, as opposed to something like a self-help book. What I've found is exactly the opposite, and I have found novels such as Great Expectations to be even more influential than anything I've ever read.
So I ask you all, what is the greatest lesson you've learned from classical fiction?
I think that's a healthy attitude to adopt for people who are struggling to regularly read books (or write them) to help them get past that. But I don't think it's a great attitude overall since there are plenty of books that may be a slog, either because of their verbosity, archaic word usage or emotionally draining subject matter, but are still incredibly rewarding, fulfilling and potentially life-changing experiences if people persist and finish them. This is especially true for non-fiction, too.
I think it's important to keep in mind that this is different for different people. I can say that if I'm forcing myself through a book, that means I'm not getting anything from it. If there was anything I valued entering my brain, it wouldn't feel like a slog. I can't speak for people who say they experience things differently, but imo "just push through it, there will be something there for you I swear" is the wrong attitude. Search for something you value or are interested in, sure, but if you can't find it, reaching the end won't fix that.
That isn't to say the only value in something is what you get from your first moments encountering it. I find that the answers, if you really want to find value in something you aren't getting shit from, tend to be external. Read conversations online, criticism, or just go do other things and come back when you're a different person somehow. There may be a future you who appreciates the book, but the book itself likely isn't going to do that.
Also I should make it clear that I mean getting something from it much more generally than @koan talks about fun. I just mean anything you're pulling that makes you feel positive about the experience or want to keep going.
Sure, not everyone will gain something by pushing through a slog of a book, and some books actually are just slogs with nothing really rewarding waiting for you at the end of them (e.g. Wuthering Heights, IMO). However, also just IMO, "if it isn't fun then give up on it" is not a very productive or healthy attitude to have overall. A lot of things in life (not just books) aren't necessarily enjoyable but can be incredibly fulfilling and valuable experiences if you persist. That isn't always true and I am not saying never do anything just for fun, but I would rather be disappointed occasionally by a slog with no real reward at the end of it, than never have experienced the rewards of accomplishing anything difficult to get through.
I do agree about the value often coming from something external though, and it being a good idea to come back to things later if you are struggling too much with them. The mood you're in when you start something can have a huge impact on whether or not you enjoy it, so putting something you are struggling with aside for a time and coming back to it later can sometimes lead to a completely different experience.
There are certainly hard things worth doing, but in my experience when that is the case there's at least some sign of that being so. I've never aimlessly picked my way through anything and found at the end that it was actually worthwhile even though the whole journey was a slog I was gaining nothing from.
I get what you're saying about if you limit that value just to fun, though. Maybe I'm reading koan's comment too generously because they used the word "enlightened" along with "entertained."
That's fair enough and maybe I was reading too much definitive in koan's statement too. We're all sort of speaking in generalities, there are always outliers to those and not everything or everyone is the same, so all that is definitely worth keeping in mind.
I think a lot of people that don't read often feel the way you did before you took this American Lit class. I can say for certain, however, that reading has given me a greater capacity for empathy. There is nothing quite like a book to help teach you what it's like to live in someone else's shoes. That and the ability to think critically are the two things that'd I've gained from reading that I would deem the most important.
Personally I don't feel like I've learned much useful from fiction books. Great books are usually idiosyncratic, from time periods that hasn't much in common with our times, and thus don't really apply to my everyday life.
I find stoic philosophers (e.g. Marcus Aurelius) quite useful however.
I tried reading Meditations, could not get through it, nothing connecting the random thoughts and it felt like just reading commandments, which is fine he never intended it to be anything else, it just makes for boring reading.
Fiction on the other hand is very good at showing and not telling, that's why it will always be applicable nomatter the time it was written in, human stories are timeless.
I think the things "learned" from fiction are so immaterial and abstract that it's difficult to talk about. In a lot of ways, that's the strength of fiction. Humans have a way of conveying information through stories that can't be carried with the same nuance (or maybe even at all) through just saying it.
I get confused by stories of people talking about how they're introduced to certain social issues or gain a whole new perspective through fiction. I don't have any stories like that, if fiction teaches me anything it'll be small social quirks or observations...it's bizarre to me to find big ideas through fiction, like high schoolers who have some big revelation after reading 1984 or Slaughterhouse Five. Solid books, I don't mean to look down on people who like them or who did take something massive away from them, that's just not how I interact with books I guess. Usually the things people say they learn from books are ideas I would think are necessary to be familiar with before appreciating those books in the first place!
Just a strange disconnect I have. Not a super useful contribution, but I wonder if others enjoy reading but feel this way.
I can somewhat agree with you. In truth, I feel that I already knew most of the lessons I've learned through fiction prior to reading about them. I believe that it helps me to apply those lessons after reading about beloved characters learning and putting them to use. Perhaps each reader's takeaway from a story is influenced by their life experience. Assuming that you're older than I am, you might have only learned from those small details because you have already experienced and learned from the core lesson. Therefore, you overlook what you may have already accepted as self-evident, and a high school student has yet to discover.
I feel like reading just gradually effects you slowly over time. There's a segment from the Histories of Herodotus that I read recently where a king asks a wise man who the happiest person in the world is, and the man lists a couple people that died honorable deaths instead of anyone living. He explains that any current wealth is ephemeral and your fortunes can change in a moment, but if you die happy, then that can never be taken away. I read that like last week and it particularly registered with me, because I already agree with the implication. I won't actually remember this passage in particular if some situation comes up that I am making a money vs happiness decision, but reading it and thinking about it will stick with my subconscious. I assume I've read things like that before that I've now forgotten from my conscious mind but are still a part of my values subconsciously.
It doesn't necessarily have to be something that is reaffirming your existing beliefs. Reading work by people you disagree with always broadens your horizons and helps you understand their position better. I think the main point is it's hard to be actively aware of when you're being fundamentally influenced by a book. Especially fiction. It's more like something you read mulls around your unconscious and then while you experience life, the stuff that's mulling around mixes with your personal experience and turns into your beliefs.
By the way, if "East of Eden" isn't covered in your class, but you're liking American lit in general, that book is the bomb and you should read it.
I haven't read much classics (trying to get that sorted), so I can't answer for that, except if that can be stretched to include ancient greek stuff. Reading Plato (which I consider semi-fiction, see his Epistles, and his chapter in Diogenes Laerteos) and exploring philosophy helped me to learn to think and observe in a very clear, objective and rational manner, both myself and the outer world. Through that I fixed my early-ruined life (I believe I had undiagnosed depression etc. for a long time), and achieved peace in my soul. I am content and happy because of that.
There also is proper fiction that helped shame my worldview. The most important two would probably be Cain and Gospel According to Jesus by Saramago, because with them I could strip myself off of all the traces of religion in my life. But every story, every book is an exploration, either of the past, of a future possible, or of a sort of alternate universe, and thus intellectually enriching. It's sad that people can downplay that so bluntly. It's also great fun, apart from being mental food, expanding the "vocabulary of your thought" and making the thought muscles stronger. There's few things I enjoy with same depth and joy as reading good narrative or poetry. And the mere feeling of enjoyment is very teaching in and of itself.
From classical fiction? I honestly can't think of anything I have learned from classics.
The thing about fiction is that the thing you tend to learn from it are largely social in nature. Think about books like Gulliver's Travels; its full of lots of social commentary, but it's not really relevant anymore. If you're talking about lessons from fiction, you're much better looking at modern examples. I would recommend reading The Hate U Give; it's the most socially and politically relevant book I've personally read, and it's got prose like poetry.
I suppose it's typical to read through a comment thread like this, and come to the conclusion, like many people, that reading fiction isn't really pertinent to everyday life.
I couldn't disagree more. We humans are hardwired for stories. It was this glue that held tribes together for hundreds of thousands of years. From sharing stories around a campfire neath an audience of stars, to glyphs and pictrograms scrawled onto rock faces. To say a story is irrelevant to ones life without looking at the underlying parable is to deny that there are human universals that span time and space. Our brains are essentially the same as they were 30k years ago. And in every time you find most people are chronosyntric, erroneously thinking their time is special, and everything before was simple and primitive.
The beauty of a parable, which many classicals can be considered, is that the protagonist fails at some grand task in life. The tragedy, as the Greeks knew, is an important guidepost to ways of living that most often end up in failure. Aesop's fables are as relevant today as they were when written as are the tragedies of the past. Human folly often leads to ruin, and I have personally managed to avoid many pitfalls of life due simply to the 'fiction' characters that wandering into that fate unknowingly.
So, the greatest lesson I've learned from the classics, is that many of them are allegorical parables showing the pitfalls of human folly and their potential repercussions.
Reading great literature has taught me that...
Language is important, powerful, and beautiful.
We as readers bring an expectation of narrative, structure, meaning, characterisation... and this is true of our species in general.
Reading itself is a deeply rewarding intellectual phenomenon.