WHY DO WE STUDY LITERATURE? MR KEATING'S ANSWER

Why should we study literature in Mr Keating's opinion?

Take notes of the main points in his speech and then try to explain what he says in your own words.

THE HARD TASK OF GROWING UP - THE BELL JAR: ESTHER GREENWOOD AND SYLVIA PLATH

Esther Greenwood and Sylvia Plath

The story of The Bell Jar is a first person account of Esther Greenwood,  Sylvia Plath herself, her story at 19. Esther, like Sylvia, is a girl who has almost everything she could ask for. She’s an individual with a mind that is above average , extremely sensitive, intellingent and talented . With all of that provided for her, Esther is also struggling with the perennial problems of morality, behavior and identity crisis. The stress and the pressure of being an achiever burns her mind out ; the tension of sexual relations and the double standards on women’s virginity, the ups and downs of family relationships increase her sense of derangement. Esther compares her life to that of an existence in a bell jar, where the air is stiff, heavy and unchanging. She feels as if she is watching her own life and everything that happened to her from within the jar.

Perhaps the best thing about the book is the fact that the life of Esther is synonymous with what the author, Sylvia Plath, had experienced. Like Esther, Plath had gone through a struggling ordeal in finding the real meaning of life and its hidden uncertainties and her eventual fall into the pit of madness.

The book has some similarities with J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye: both Esther and Holden are troubled young souls searching for the true meaning of life. Both escapes the reality they can’t accept. Both are considered crazy because of their atypicality and fragility.

“For the first time in my life, sitting there in the sound-proof heart of the UN building between Constantin who could play tennis as well as simultaneously interpret and the Russian girl who knew so many idioms I felt dreadfully inadequate. The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it.

The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end. felt like a racehorse in a world without race-tracks...” (The Bell Jar, chapter 7, pp. 72-73)

THE HARD TASK OF GROWING UP - INTERACTING WITH ADULTS

Watch the two videos below and compare the adults you see interact with teenagers to the adult figures we found in Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and Saroyan's The Human Comedy. 

THE HUMAN COMEDY BY WILLIAM SAROYAN - THE HARD TASK OF GROWING UP

It’s a story built on very simple facts, very ordinary people, very simple words which aims at transforming history and reality into unheroic epic mythology. That of everyday battles and sufferings. It is a story set in California in the time of WWII but it is actually a story beyond space and time. Homer
the 16-year-old protagonist, Ulysses, his little brother,  and Marcus, his elder brother at war. They live in Ithaca, San Joaquin Valley, California. They’ve got a sister and a mother. But there are no heroes. The Macauleys’ struggles and dreams reflect those of America’s second generation immigrants but-  and especially- also  those of any human being at any time in any place. No , they are not heroic epic figures but real life protagonists of  THE HUMAN COMEDY (1943).

Homer  is the protagonist, in his teen, determined to become the fastest telegraph messenger in the West, happy to be the man of the family in a difficult moment. Happy to ride his bycicle in the wind. But it’s wartime. Time to grow – up for him. Childhood ends when we realize suffering and death exist and they are there, inescapable,  for all of us. Homer becomes aware of that little by little: he is a messenger of death. A mother opens the door, he gives her a telegram and …

“It wasn’t  Homer fault. His work was to deliver telegrams. Even so, he felt awkward and almost as if he alone were responsible for what had happened (… )He was on his bycicle suddenly, riding swiftly down the dark street, tears coming out of his eyes, his mouth whispering crazy young curses. When he got back to the telegraph office the tears had stopped, but everything else had started and he knew there would be no stopping them” (pp.26/28)