The Historical Perspective Part One: Why?

Literature today is obsessed with shock and awe, meaning any little thing that gets a reaction is written into a novel. Modern readers drive that obsession, focusing on what is the equivalence of television literature. Minimally mentally stimulating for a maximum feeling is the modern reader’s motto. In essence we are becoming lazy readers. I am no different: I read some books because they are easy, and I read others because they are fast. I am impatient and want to get the pleasure of reading great texts in the time and effort required to flip through a magazine.

In modern America there are few places where we are challenged as readers to actually think when we read, and even more rare is to be challenged to read anything that has real meaning. The two places in my life where I have ever been pushed in my reading have been in my own head and in my English class. The latter has pushed me to expand my library and changed my opinions so that now, in my mind the only books worth reading are the books with genuine weight to them; Shakespeare, philosophical texts, anything that I could cite in an academic paper. My English teachers of the last few years have made it painfully clear to me how pretentious I have been with my opinions. I never would have chosen to read Lord of the Flies, or even Catcher in the Rye, but these books have messages that carry a similar weight to those in Othello or A Tale of Two Cities.

All of this buildup is leading up to the fact that I am writing this blog for my English class with the purpose of analyzing the novel Beloved—more specifically, analyzing Beloved with a focus on the historical context and implications of the novel, and how those impact the novel. I hope you stick around. I think this is going to be pretty interesting.