by Kim Bartenfelder

Falling for a book is a strange, inevitable phenomenon, but to fall for American literature is an especially enlightening experience. You know these books: “In Cold Blood,” “Of Mice and Men,” and “The Catcher in the Rye.” Time and time again, American literature has had the ability to span generations, making a reader’s experience of the narrative one that supersedes time. Relying on thematic parallels between reality and fiction, readers are intrigued by the hopes, social commentaries, and love stories that keeps them coming back for a second, third, and maybe even fourth read.

You know these books: “In Cold Blood,” “Of Mice and Men,” and “The Catcher in the Rye.”

At the core is truth to past, actuality of the present, and a glimpse into the future. By intertwining narrative and a larger social commentary, the genre functions to serve the American public. That these timeless pieces of literature can be reinterpreted and expanded upon throughout the years, speaks to a vast audience.

More often than not, people reflect on past experiences to guide them through current obstacles in their lives. The same can be true of literature. American literature revolves around the idea of the past and gives readers insights into how best to [not] repeat it. The canon is stimulated and driven by social issues, and diverse enough that the modern day reader can live and learn from the books contained within it.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” confronts race relations in a frank, but literary way.

In one of the most monumental books in American literature, “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1960), author Harper Lee critiques racial injustice, innocence, law, and education with brutal honesty. She asserts throughout the text the mortal sin and logical inconsistency of killing a mockingbird. Contextually, a mockingbird represents innocence, portrayed in characters like Boo Radley, the mysterious figure throughout the novel, and Tom Robinson, the African-American man falsely charged with the rape of a white woman. Lee’s novel confronts the splintered relations between white-normative society and other races in a frank, but literary way.

It’s also worth taking into account the influence of the film adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” released in December of 1962 and featuring many noteworthy actors. The physical transformation to film enabled viewers to watch the words of the pages play out and draw comparisons to their lives in real time. Lee’s novel is still taught in schools today, used in social rhetoric, and loved by generations of readers, making it a monolith in American literature for examining social frameworks.

The canon is stimulated and driven by social issues, and diverse enough that the modern day reader can live and learn from the books contained within i

Another renowned— yet distinctly different— product of love, secrecy, and immortal hope is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” (1925), which depicts the American social hierarchy and true love. The characters represent the levels of wealth, a dramatic love triangle allowing readers to place themselves on Team Gatsby or Team Tom in the fight for Daisy’s love and loyalty. Ultimately, the hunger for power and status is all-consuming, and readers are faced with the detriment of social hierarchies and the destruction and pain that love can cause.

“The Great Gatsby” remains relevant to a vast audience.

Fitzgerald’s novel emphasizes the pure lavishness of living one’s best life. After the 1929 stock market crash and the great depression, however, many Americans were forced to reflect on their spending habits, materialistic lifestyles, and survival. The characters and their stories were no longer relatable, but might have served as an escape from reality and a suggestion to future generations about the perils of wealth and recklessness. Adaptations have also been made of Fitzgerald’s work, including at least six different films, and for reasons no less compelling than Lee’s narrative, the ideas remain personal and applicable to vast audiences.

American classics are not intended for scholars and students to beat to death with analysis. They must be experienced and enjoyed. But they should also be used to detail the social issues that are present in our lives, for they are essential to instructing readers about the past, engaging young minds to think independently, and encouraging cultural metamorphosis.

American classics are not intended for scholars and students to beat to death with analysis. They must be experienced and enjoyed.

Kim Bartenfelder is an undergraduate student at
George Mason University seeking a degree in English.
English spans more than written word but rather generations, history, moral lessons, and nationality.
Kim's two cents is that all literature is good literature.
The ones that leave the biggest impression
are the ones that match your vibe.

by Kim Bartenfelder

Fifty years, before the advent of the twenty-four hour news cycle and social media, before we had anything remotely reminiscent of modern media, we had books. Literature was the most direct way to inform the public and draw attention to the environmental concerns of our time. But as modern media has continued to grow and morph into a behemoth of instant gratification, it’s really contemporary writers like Barbara Kingsolver, who have worked to shift the focus back to the details.

Whether in-person or in her writing, Kingsolver uses her mastery of her own understanding of the world around her—specifically her home of Appalachia—to inform the public about what she sees as the pressing environmental concerns of our time. Kingsolver’s writing recalls one of the pivotal moments for the environment and literature: the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962, which helped launch an environmental movement around pesticide use and allowed the public a deeper glimpse at the environmental stakes associated with the use of DDT, setting the tone for literature to function as an informed advocate for the public.

Like Carson, Kingsolver’s admiration for the natural world is ever-present in her writing, from the imagery of Appalachia’s bountiful forests to the unforgiving mountainous terrain, to utilizing details about animal and plant diversity to create balance between poetic justice and scientific fact.

Whether in-person or in her writing, Kingsolver uses her mastery of her own understanding of the world around her—specifically her home of Appalachia—to inform the public about what she sees as the pressing environmental concerns of our time.

To do this, she draws inspiration from her predecessors, namely David Thoreau. “[His] gifts as a writer, [have] transcended his contributions to natural science. [He] dismissed the notion that poetry and science are incompatible, and captured for his readers the simple wonder we hastily leave behind in the age of reason,” she notes in her 1995 collection of short essays, “Hide Tide in Tucson” (HarperCollins, 1995).

Kingsolver channels this same energy in her fiction, from her earlier works like “Prodigal Summer," released in 2000, to her more contemporary “Flight Behavior” (Harper, 2012). To inspire readers who are passionate, who have a desire to become passionate, or are native to Appalachia, Kingsolver uses fictional stories to emphasize the true nature of how the environment functions in a world of human influence (and sometimes destruction).

In her “Prodigal Summer,” a novel told in three short narratives, the focus is on the environment as a safe haven. In the first story, her character Deanna initially finds peace in the solitude nature of the forest, which enables her to conduct research for the government while allowing her to reflect. The three stories intertwine through their connection of the characters’ love for the environment and their love for others. And yet, despite nature’s natural comfort, its isolation also serves as a realistic fear for her characters. In the second story, the narrator Lusa struggles with her identity in the context of her new environment: “Now she felt like a frontier mail-order bride, hardly past her wedding and already wondering how she could have left her city and beloved career for the narrow place a rural county holds open for a farmer’s wife.”

Kingsolver’s novel, “Flight Behavior,” examines a more critical side to the environment. After carrying on an affair with a younger man, the main character Dellarobia, wanders into a field behind her house and notices it is covered with monarch butterflies, too many to count. The culprit for this phenomenon is global warming and climate change, which has disrupted the monarch’s traditional migration patterns, leaving them in grave danger of dying off come winter in Appalachia — a stark, dually-faceted warning about the nature of human behavior.

Rather, while lyric in its approach — and an absolute joy to read — Kingsolver’s writing is also a call to action.

But while Kingsolver often utilizes the power of fiction as a platform to call out the injustices humans have enacted on the planet, the consequences of the events in her books are hardly fictional. Rather, while lyric in its approach — and an absolute joy to read — Kingsolver’s writing is also a call to action. She has reinvigorated the function of literature in our modern context, pushing readers to look past their electronic screens and uncover the real news, the real talk, the real beauty, and the real power they have to change and control the human influences on the environment. In this way, she not only serves as the catalyst for environmental change in literature, but she is enlightening readers and future writers to continue to champion nature.