As you step into that quaint little journey of self-improvement, you may inevitably find yourself making a promise to read more. In compiling that list, however, you may have found that self-help books and modern reflections don’t seem to capture your diverse reading tastes.
Your palate craves something more mature: the classics.
Oddly enough, your schooling experiences would have given you plenty of reasons as to why you should read classic books—an influence your strong-willed mind would have rejected more than once.
Why is it important?
Classic literature often provides an undying reflection of the human condition as it has been understood over time. This is something we desperately need to process at a deeper level, especially while we are confronted with concerns reflected in that literature in modern life.
Times change. The nature of our problems shifts along with it. What about those issues that endure with the ages? What about those meaningful philosophical inquiries that tease your mind at night when blissful sleep seems too elusive to chase it all away?
Interested to know how the classics offer a solution? Then read on. You might just change your reading diet.
The Escape from Mediocrity
Why You Should Read Classic Books
We live in a time when information is more accessible than ever, and naturally humanity has responded by making sure an overload thereof assaults our senses.
The irony is that the great multitude of worldly issues have acquired such a complexity, that it becomes more difficult to process or we don’t think to trace those issues to their foundations.
So, we’ve launched ourselves into the inviting arms of a reprieve like social media. The amount of content is nearly equally overwhelming, but instead provides us with that hedonic stimulation that makes us feel happy while placing our problems on the back burner.
Convenient and cathartic as that may seem sometimes, it’s made us increasingly unwilling to confront concerns that arise around us. We have resorted to burying them under the avalanche of more digestible and clickable content.
In fact, our modern world only seems to offer us two choices of late: 1) content that tackle the issue head-on, or 2) content that displaces the issue entirely.
So, while politicians, economists, and social scientists debunk, dissect, and deconstruct the contemporary struggle, other influencers wish to direct our focus away from it.
While there are inherent values in each and an interest in this more modern content is valid, it’s just as important to vary the types of information taken in. An understanding of an older value or trend, for example, can help inform analysis of timely concepts.
We can’t quite outrun the world or the conundrums it faces. They do tend to resurface, seeking address and reflection of some kind.
There needs to be a change to the formula. The way in which we represent the human condition simply needs to be altered.
Coincidentally, the classics have long mastered devices to do just that.
The Timeless Trials of the Human Experience
Changing Points of View
When you look at your life, you’ll naturally come to feel that your journey is a unique combination of triumphs and tribulations. Entertaining such thoughts are not wrong, but it has the unfortunate consequence of making us egocentric.
Simply put, we are incapable of completely understanding matters through any lens besides our own.
To add to the flavor, you may also be one of those people who are pretty stubborn concerning advice. You seek the right answers, but to feel empowered, you want to discover them yourself.
Classic literature offers that satisfaction, by presenting circumstances that mirror your own through a story—separating you from the issue whilst paradoxically immersing you in it.
Filled to the brim with metaphors and allegory, old works of fiction manage to break down human thought and feeling through its characters, but presents it vicariously through them instead of confronting us with it directly.
Even the simplest of elements, contributing to the overall setting and context of the work, often assume a symbolic value when you pay attention.
Consider for instance the novel, Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. Is it merely the account of a seafaring adventure? Is it a multi-layered exploration in the quest to find meaning? Find out why you should read this literary masterpiece.
Latent and Manifest Content: The Beauty of Allegory
Moby Dick is more than an adventure. It is an exploration of issues that engages us on social and personal levels.
Though the plotline puts you front and center to the indisputable hunt of a monstrous white whale, it is told through the eyes of a man, Ishmael, whose views of the voyage brings forth existential questioning, social commentary, and the philosophical crossroads you come to as you face our inner conflicts.
Melville, like other classic authors, achieves this through his rife use of symbolism, layering his novel with meaning by having “the seen” (manifest content) represent “the unseen” (latent content).
Here are a few examples of how he and other authors accomplish this:
| Book | Manifest Content | Latent Content |
| Moby Dick—Herman Melville | The white whale is seen as the object of Captain Ahab’s revenge. | Symbolically, the white whale can represent everything that Ahab fights against: a regime beyond his control, power, humility, and his inability to accept his circumstances. |
| The Great Gatsby—F. Scott Fitzgerald | At night, across the harbor where Jay Gatsby lives, a green light shines on the dock of his love interest, Daisy Buchanan. | The green light comes to represent the ideals and ever evasive dream that Gatsby clung to—so close, yet just out of his reach. |
| Pride and Prejudice—Jane Austen | In the novel, dancing is considered to reflect a couple’s compatibility within their relationship. | The first dance Elizabeth had with Darcy was very stiff and formal, seen to represent their interaction at that particular time in the novel. |
Simple, yet effective, the metaphorical threads that weave the story of such classic literature ultimately help us to look more critically at the human experience and find the meaning that seems hidden, almost as if for our personal discovery.
Literary Lessons of Expression
When reading the classics, it will become readily apparent to you why it isn’t a mere act of escapism. We identify with the characters and saturate our thoughts with their lives, possibly because they so closely resemble our own.
In fact, there is research that investigates how fiction actually presents us hypothetical social conditions that require a certain emotive and behavioral repertoire to help cope with them.
Every narrative provides a blueprint of individual struggle, simulating how characters—representing real and relatable people—navigate their choices of morality and tap into their inner strengths to face their looming crisis.
Unknowingly, reading the classics will allow you to identify with a complex range of emotions, and even teach you how to find a cathartic outlet for these feelings in situations that seem to contain the main themes you have just read about.
Call it a simulation or perhaps the unsung value of bibliotherapy, but reading the classics could inevitably help you to improve your self-knowledge and social cognition.
Preparing for Page Turners: Some Guidance on the Classics
Is it strange to have a sense of imposter syndrome when you plan to read classic literature?
Not at all. Classic literature can be daunting, especially because it’s often associated with unique, dated, and difficult vocabulary. It reflects the language and mindset of an entirely different era. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you start.
Where do I start?
Classic books can seem intimidating, but that doesn’t mean you should shy away from their challenging ideas. The pressure of reading these books can be relieved by knowing your reading preferences as a start. Here are some guidelines.
Closing One Chapter, Starting Another
There is a reason that the classics are considered timeless masterpieces. They bridge the boundaries of time, providing us with strong and enduring ideas that still manage to break conventions years after they were written.
It helps you understand yourself contextually in the scope of human history. It makes you question your world view and ponder the deeper meaning of a life that tends to get lost in the hyperactive 21st century.
More importantly, it allows you to become more emotionally flexible and resilient as you reconnect with tried and tested ways of expressing your thoughts and feelings through the eyes of iconic fictional heroes.
Where can you find some of these literary specimens? Why not peruse a list of must-reads as suggested by the other lovers of classic works?
Whether you’re grappling with conflicts that dive deeper than elusive phantom whales, reaching for seemingly incorruptible dreams that flicker wholesomely like a green light in the distance, or you have a love life that seems to dance circles around you, you’ll surely discover your own reasons for losing yourself in the lives of characters that embody your greatest hopes, fears, needs or desires.