I joined Quiz bowl this year, and I’ve been learning about books that are classics or are considered “literary,” and a lot of them sound interesting to me. I’m a fan of pretty language in books. I’m a fan of complex, well thought out metaphors, so a lot of these books I hear about sound intriguing to me.
I read the first chapter of Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison today. I went into the book blind with pretty much no expectations, and just in the first chapter we got a guy jumping off a building, and a different suicide attempt. We also got a woman who has a weird, icky relationship with her son as well as her Dad. And Macon who I think is the main character threatened to evict a single mother that was struggling to pay her rent and feed her children. When I saw the title I thought it was going to be a romance, and so far I’ve been severely disappointed.
The last book I read was Heart of Darkness, and I knew it was going to be kind of sad and gruesome because I had already watched Apocalypse Now, and I knew about the relationship between the two. One of my teachers had a copy of Heart of Darkness, and it’s a really small book. I knew it was going to be sad and gruesome, but I thought it was short enough that it wouldn’t be too bad. But its so hard to read it took me like three weeks, maybe, and it was just a really depressing book. Watching Apocalypse Now was a lot more bearable because HoD took me 10+ hours to read, while apocalypse now was only a two hour movie. It was the same subject matter but HoD was a more prolonged exposure to it.
Before that I read 100 years of solitude. I watched some youtube videos on it, and it sounded really interesting. I heard about the yellow butterflies and the roses falling from the sky and how it was multi generational story, and I kind of assumed it was going to be a story of love and loss. I thought it was going to be equal parts joy and equal parts sadness. When I actually went to read it, it gave me this really strong feeling of loneliness, which I probably should of known would happen from the title. I feel like there was only a few rare happy moments in the book, and the rest was just bad thing after bad thing, and I know that’s what the author was intending, but reading it just made me sad.
Why do you guys think books that are considered to have academic value tend to be so sad. I’m too early into song of Solomon to really know what its central themes are. Heart of Darkness is supposed to be about the evil nature of the human race, so its depicting all the horrible acts of human kind. 100 years of solitude is supposed to be about the self destructive nature of the human race, so it depicts people making bad decision that lead to unfulfilling and solitary lives. Going in to other books I’ve read, Things Fall apart is about a culture was destroyed by colonialism. Frankenstein is about somebody who is shunned by society and who’s creator hates them. Even children’s classics like Old yeller and Charlette’s Webb spend a whole book making you attached to one character and then killing them off.
All these books have pretty dark subject matter that justifies how sad they are, but why do so many well respected books have such dark subject matter? Is there a reason why books with dark subject matter or more respected than books with lighter subject matter? Most of these book depict the negative aspects of human nature. Are there any great literary works that depict the positive aspects of human nature?
One example I can think of is the little prince. I think it’s really well written and uses well thought out metaphors, and has some insight on human nature. But it’s insight isn’t that human nature is inherently evil like in Heart of Darkness or that human nature is inherently self destructive like 100 years of solitude. The insight of the little prince is that our relationships are as valuable as the effort we put into them, which is insight that I feel like applies to my life more than anything Frankenstein or Heart of Darkness said.
It’s not that books should never have dark or sad subject matter it’s just that most of the books we put on classics list or that we study in school are these depressing ass books that talk about horrible everyone is. I honestly prefer a book to have sad moments as well as joyous moments, but a lot of these books are just pity parties.
An argument I see a lot is that these books are so dark because “thats how life really is.” I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve never gone to colonize Africa, I’ve never fought in a war, I’ve never sailed the ocean trying to kill one really big fish, or most other tropes in classic literature. I also don’t think humanity inherently evil. I just feel like a lot of what happens in classic literature isn’t all that applicable to actual modern day people’s lives.
Should I just stop reading literary fiction? Should I just start reading Fantasy, or sci fi, or young adult romance? Are there any great well respected books that aren’t sad and gross?
by Trych0till0mania
2 Comments
I think it’s reflective of life. Real life is depressing. Also… happiness is boring in terms of plot. “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” if you know what I mean
>An argument I see a lot is that these books are so dark because “thats how life really is.”
Most of the literary reads allow a reader to feel a complex set of emotions. There’s a vaguely close enough version of happily ever after but it’s not what we are used to at the end of a fairytale.
I understand what you are going through. I experienced a similar process when I first read Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ as a teenager.