People often take classics for granted and don’t include them in their reading list, believing they’ll be dull. However, apart from the sophisticated language and old scenarios, some classics have remained popular for a reason and are many things but dull.
Let’s go over three books that are classics for a reason and a must-read for everyone.
Little Women
“Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts, and they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent as well as just beauty, and I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for.”
– Jo March, Little Women
Have you ever felt like your whole existence revolved around romantic love? As if nothing you’ve ever done was enough if it was not followed by the pride of having a lover by your side? Well, if you haven’t, the character Jo March has been feeling it enough for all of us since 1868, the date of the release of Little Women (Greta Gerwig, 2019).
This feminist novel written by Louisa May Alcott is a coming-of-age masterpiece representing five different archetypes of women. The March sisters are described as having completely different personalities, views of society, and life choices, however, they all share an incomprehensible love for their family and lost childhood.
At first, the book was divided into two parts, but nowadays it is sold comprising both stories, in which the first goes over the girls’ childhood, and the second is about maturing into young women entering adulthood.
Therefore, there is no better time to read this novel than when we are in college, the moment of leaving the teen years behind.
When entering the “twenty-somethings”, we are forced to grow from school girls who only worried about getting a good grade in math, into women who will stress about getting a job and retiring from their parents.
It is hard, painful, and sad to let go of the children we once were, but is also beautiful and exhilarating to enter a new life full of undiscovered possibilities.
Throughout the reading of Little Women we are presented with the singular way each of the five sisters copes with the new adult emotions. The oldest one, Meg March, who dreams of building a family of her own and loves to be in society, deals with the challenge of marrying a man out of love, and not title.
In comparison, Jo March is a free-spirited and strong-willed writer who desires to publish her plays and does not wish to marry, whatsoever to give birth.
The middle child, Beth March, is a quiet and selfless girl who’s admired by her family and fits well her role of being a “good girl”.
For last, the youngest, Amy March, is seen as childish and irritating, bound to always be the object of mockery and pity by her sisters. Amy strives to gain her sister’s respect and to prove her value not only to others but to herself as well.
To read Little Women is to find a piece of yourself in each one of the sisters. It is to understand that there is not one single individual experience in girlhood, given everything we go through, the March sisters experienced the same a century ago.
To Kill a Mockingbird
“Looks like there’s just one kind of folks: Folks.”
– Scout Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird is a timeless book written by Harper Lee that goes over the racist southern society of the United States during the decade of 1930. The story is told through the eyes of a six-year-old girl, Scout Finch, who’s the daughter of a famous town lawyer, Atticus Finch.
In the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, in 1935, racial segregation was the reality.
Accordingly, when young black Tom Robinson is falsely accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white girl, there is not much in his favor, until Atticus Finch decides to represent him in court.
The single father and lawyer went against every opinion and value of the racist society of Maycomb and decided to prove young Tom’s innocence, even if it cost the ruin of his own reputation. The case is narrated through the lens of a child who slowly starts to understand the evil scenario of the community she lives in, and as the story develops, she loses her innocence about racism and prejudice.
To Kill a Mockingbird is an intelligent book that puts on display the most interesting possible point of view of a very sad happening. It is, at least, brilliant and innovative, especially taking into account the year it was written, 1960, which was four years before the end of social segregation in the United States.
This masterpiece smartly represents the blissful ignorance children share and how their innocent eyes are often more rational than the prejudiced perspectives of adults. It is a must-read for everyone and exposes how the hatred within people distorts their judgment and generates a type of justice moved by the wrong principles.
Brave New World
“I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
– John, Brave New World
Would you agree to never feel pain, suffering, grief, or anger again if it meant that you would never feel love as well?
If you’ve said yes, you would be a great character in the dystopian book Brave New World, which portrays a dictatorship that controls human feelings through artificial drugs. The never-ending happiness is generated by the Soma, a modern drug that suppresses bad feelings and promotes submission.
People are born and raised in a stratified caste system that controls every human emotion in order to promote the most productive society possible.
For example, the concepts of love and family are discouraged and promiscuous relations take place because the only desired outcome is procreation. Every common sense of our society is reverted and stimulated to cause a certain repulsion in people.
That is when a character called Bernard Marx starts adventuring himself into the forbidden pleasures of society; religion, nature, art, love, and happiness.
Brave New World was written by Aldous Huxley as a strong critic of any dictatorial government that aims to control through the suffocation of what makes us humans; feelings and free communication.
It is a smart and thoughtful book that makes you question how much value you give to all the privileges you didn’t know you had, such as feeling however you’d like to and loving whoever you want to.
Apart from that, it is touching, shocking, and life-changing, the type of book that will make you stare at a wall for hours questioning every single social concept you’ve ever acknowledged as truthful.
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The article above was edited by Isa Mucilo
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