I sometimes think that high school students are not mature enough to understand literature. I know I was not.
The books that were assigned were mostly boring. They were almost impossible to read. I slogged through but never “enjoyed” reading them.
The closest I got was when we were reading Romeo and Juliet. The play was in our textbooks. Which made it easy, but I was and am lazy. Lugging a massive textbook to class when I could carry a thin, light book seemed stupid.
So that’s what I did; I purchased a copy from the local bookstore and used that instead.
This was not an issue until I was asked to read a part in class. Which I did. When I got to the end of my passage, nobody spoke the next lines. They were all thumbing through their textbooks trying to figure out where the F that language and those visuals came from.
My teacher, Mrs. Trout(?) was just nodding along. She knew the real words of Bill. The teacher from next door came and closed our classroom door because her class was listening to us instead of her.
What had happened was that I was reading the unabridged version. The textbook had stripped out all the “juicy” parts.
By the end of the next week, everybody in class had the pocket version and was much more invested in the writings of Bill. Our teacher was thrilled.
The Scarlet Letter, Oh my goodness, I still despise that thing. The Fountainhead, I’m glad I wasn’t forced to read that. And one of my most hated assignments? The Red Badge of Courage.
One of my ESL students picked The Red Badge of Courage. I walked into it knowing I would have to slog through.
Then it turned into something wonderful. The language is visceral. The author’s use of anthropomorphic language brings emotion to the story.
And listening to Henry talk about the glory of war. The battles he would fight. The honors he would reap. His friend and he, looking at the officers with disdain while grasping at every rumor of battle.
But Henry did not earn honors in his first battle. He exposed himself. He stripped the glory from his uniform and dashed it in the mud.
He had to live with his actions.
The next time the bugles sounded, he stood and fought. He fought not as a man or a hero. He fought as a machine. Standing because he could not stomach another failure of his soul and honor.
He earned his honor. And he learned of the horrors of battle.
Huckleberry Finn, the Grapes of Wrath were two of the best they made us read.
the scarlet letter- boring puke inducing.
on a good book I was always 6 or 8 chapters ahead of everyone else. high school, ancient history… best left there.
graduation was like getting out of prison..
Bad abridging happens to non-fiction too. I once made the mistake of buying the paperback version of “The Codebreakers”. Bad mistake. It contains about 20% of the content of the hardcover, and less than that of the value. Only get the real edition.
When I was a kid, editions for young audiences of Ivanhoe, and derivatives like what’s now called “graphic novels” were all over the place. I remember not being all that impressed. A few years ago I found, at gutenberg.org, the original full edition (800 pages or so) by Walter Scott. Spellbinding in spite of the old language and many pages.
Speaking of Romeo & Juliet, the movie version is amazingly good. To be specific, the 1968 one by Franco Zeffirelli. For one thing, the actors are young enough to be credible as the actual characters, but they also act quite well.
Wanted to pop in here and say that there ARE unabridged graphic novels out there of classic works. I had a boyfriend, way back in the dark ages when I was in high school. He was dyslexic (at the time, that meant he was diagnosed as “stupid, doesn’t apply himself” and he got stuffed in with “the dumb kids”), and had difficulty figuring out written words. But comics seemed to work for him (I posit now that it was the font used). So I got him Merchant of Venice in comic form, unabridged, and he was able to do advanced English that year. Nothing wrong with his brain; lots wrong with the idiots who diagnosed him. He went on to become a big reader!