There has been a lot of interest this past week on a previous post, here on why characters and quotations from literature are often remembered long after the book has been put down.
Thank you for the comments, I’m delighted that you found educational or personal clarity and have selected a few more literary life lines in this post.
Literature that speaks to the human condition echoes through time when emotional connections are formed.
Love, despair, fear, envy, passion, hatred and kindness guide our motivations in the choices or decisions we make in life.
Students of literature are often expected to engage in critical appreciation of texts.
Values, culture and language, events or situations motivate characters’ actions and in turn, motivate readers’ reactions eliciting a new wave of interpreting ideas. And so the chain of literary discourse begins…
Let’s turn to a few more examples from literature:
William Shakespeare:
Henry IV Part 1– envy
Yea, there thou mak’st me sad, and mak’st me sin
In envy that my Lord Northumberland
Should be the father to so blest a son
This implied comparison while praising the son of another reveals a father’s apparent disappointment in his own son. King Henry IV is disgruntled with his son Hal’s ‘unprincely’ moral conduct when compared to Hotspur. No doubt a timeless view of good sons and misbehaving sons.
Anthony and Cleopatra – fear and hatred
In time we hate that which we often fear
That which instils fear breeds hatred when the victim is pushed to the edge. How often have we observed the heinous outcome from either being bullied or being mistreated? This is advice that Charmian gives Cleopatra as a life lesson on what mistreatment might court.
Jane Austen – love, passion
Pride and Prejudice
In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
This proclamation of love has saved many a marriage or started the blossoming of love that might have been lost were it not for honesty! Mr Darcy became a hero in this moment not only to Elizabeth Bennett but every hopeful lover who wanted to feel the passion in such an unremitting declaration of love.
Good literature should resonate with the reader —bringing personal or literary value.
Countless writers have produced prophetic lines that will continue to reverberate into the future.
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