/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11969928]

After yesterday, I've thinking about all those books I read as a kid where the dog/girl/old man died at the end. Looking back, I can't remember how I felt about them, though I've heard many people say they hated it.

did you hate them /lit/?

Do you think it's cheating to kill off characters just to create a permanent memory through trauma?

[Anonymous No.11969966]

>>11969928
I suppose. Good for YA and below though. Kids have to learn about death and how to handle it, and books can be part of that process.

[Anonymous No.11970713]

>>11969928
I still wonder if there's a link between the way American high schools teach literature and then wonder why the education system produces plebs and halfwits who think that the Harry Potter series and Ready Player One are examples of good writing.

[Anonymous No.11971878]

>>11970713
They used to stratify kids more I think. Like smart kids would read the Trial and Canterbury Tales and other good stuff and the plebs would "read" A Chrimbus Carol and Tom Sawyer or something. So if you liked reading and weren't literally retarded you would get to read interesting books in high school.

Now...I suspect, sometimes, that it's more homogenized...although in my high school we read The Odyssey, Shakespeare, Shaw, and Ellison's Invisible Man...really we just needed to read and write more, the quality of what little we read was fine.

[Anonymous No.11971913]

>>11970713
You know, my favorite part of coming to /lit/ is being told I’m retarded for being educated in America. It’s not like America has some of the greatest writers the world has seen, or that it’s practically carrying contemporary literature. It’s great to see my country slandered because some dickheads read a buzzfeed article about how some people liked Harry Potter.

[Anonymous No.11971926]

>>11971913
>I’m fortunate enough to have gone to good schools and sheltered enough that I have no idea just how bad American schools can get

[Anonymous No.11971937]

>>11971913
I'm not American, but I 100% agree
As a European I see a lot of people flinging shit at America from their mud huts and honestly, it just reeks of jealousy.

[Anonymous No.11971944]

>>11971926
I went to a ghetto school in a low income area, but because I actually wanted to learn I learned. Sure reading the same 30 books in rotation of regular English classes is dull but if you take AP or any advance classes you are introduced to a wider range of subjects and literature that are outside the high school curriculum.

[Anonymous No.11972434]

>>11971913
Here's the thing, though, I am an American and went to American schools, and I speak from experience. Even if you went to a decent school, the way that schools teach lit is it really turns people off, basically by dissecting it until it's no longer read for fun or education, it's read for long boring essays you have to write and the tests that are specifically designed to screw over those who skimmed. As a result, it drives teenagers away from reading anything other than the YA novel du jour and Internet crap, and I'd be lying if I said I read non-required books for fun during those years (well, fiction at least). At least that's my interpretation of it.

[Anonymous No.11972485]

>>11971913
Really it's not much better in Europe. When starting literature classes in uni we had to "create our own canon". The class was mostly girls and my group as well, what they picked were Harry Potter and The Diaries of Anne Frank. Another (fat) girl took Donald Duck comics. I want western society to die as soon as possible.