The Hunger Games vs. Frankenstein.
By Ushoshi Mookerjee
PHILADELPHIA: Sometime during the few precious months of summer, my friends and I discuss a dreaded topic: summer work. These two words drop like a bomb, destroying any faint images of luxurious summer languor.
Although I loathe summer work, the reading parts were always considered my favorite parts of the toil as they sanctioned me to read interesting books outside of my fancied genres. However, the older I get, the more modern books I see on my reading list and the less I see of the brooding classics of all time. Wading through the list, painstakingly, I order, Obasan, Waiting for the Barbarians, The Hours, and The Book Thief among several others.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with new stories and perspectives. Evolving is the way we humans live. So, staying grounded in the current age is important, I guess, in understanding more about our active roles in the world.
But should these modern tales replace the time-tested classics of the bygone centuries? We all love the idea of staying up-to-date with a few recent releases, say, Life of Pi, yet we reference Charles Dickens and John Steinbeck whenever possible. Those authors seem to have sketched with their pens on the soil of our earth.
Without the classics, the moral and social evolution of mankind would have perhaps been in jeopardy. Greek mythologies, Shakespearean tragedies, Jane Austen romances and poetry of T.S. Eliot have established ethereal stories, providing insight into society that holds true centuries later.
Since most modern books stress realism, terse prose, and profuse dialogue, emphasis on artistic language is overlooked. Today, the focus on mind-bending plots is crucial in drawing public attention.
Consider recent hits, such as The Hunger Games series. As much as I love the riveting series and its depiction of corruption in politics, I would rather read the mystifying tale of the misconceived outcast searching for human compassion in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The Hunger Games is no doubt captivating, focused as it is on thrill and action, while Frankenstein is deeply rooted in complex human emotions of unfounded fear and loneliness.
So what is it about the classics that draw us back to them over and over again? In my opinion, not only do they stun readers with gusts of rhythmic language, they also immortalize iconic scenes from certain eras. For instance, in the pastoral Tess of D’Urbervilles, the conniving Alec adorns Tess with a plethora of gaudy roses. And as the impoverished cowgirl leaves for home, villagers stare and smile at the curious paradox that meets their eyes.
Or take for example, Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Fuming with envy at flamboyantly-dressed belles at the Charity Ball for “the Cause†(the Civil War), newly-widowed Scarlett defies the rules of proper widow etiquette as she accepts Rhett Butler’s invitation for a dance. Her audacity galls the gossipmongers. Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary evokes, scene after scene, a poetic yearning for glamour through an ambitious housewife’s desires for miraculous adventures. These vivid paintings created years back at another time keep replaying in life even today.
Yet what may be the purpose for our high school curriculum to shift the focus to modern-style books? In an abundant society where iPhones, tablets, and digitized book-reading devices are the norm, people strive for functional efficiency.
In an effort to experience more of the latest technological crazes, people work longer hours, sleep less and travel often. Consequently, there is just not enough concentration to relish paragraphs dripping with descriptions. Perhaps we are just a jet-set society, too fast tracked to endure old-fashioned characters and beliefs embedded in the classics.
Also, colloquialisms, rife in everyday conversations, have found their way into literature to democratize our erudite philosophy. The common man with his simplistic dialogue is in vogue today.
However, on a grey, stormy afternoon, when clouds are downcast in the skies and the thunder rolls, deep and low, I, for my part, would rather delve into the mysterious opera house in The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux.
(Ushoshi Mookerjee is a high school junior and the managing editor of her school newspaper. For two consecutive years, she won the first prize in poetry at Young Poets of Delaware County Poetry Competition in Pennsylvania, the 2012 Carol Ann Robertson Award given by Desales University High School Poetry Festival, and the first prize at Annenberg/Philadelphia Inquirer Journalism Competition, 2013. Her hobbies include sewing clothes and biking.)