Calvino's Why Read the Classics?

What is Literature? 

Literature is a form of writing that provokes your mind and forces you to see life in a new way. It is work that has a creative expression and shows feeling in the text, rather then being factual like a history book. Literature is more then just words on a page, it is a way into another person's perspective during a certain time and place in their life.

Response to Why Read the Classics?

In Italo Calvino's, Why Read the Classics?, he gives many definitions of a classic. Calvino made many noteworthy observations, but one that stuck out was when he said, "A classic is a book which each reading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading"(Calvino 5). When one can discover a whole knew meaning when reading the book for a second time, it shows that the book has a purpose and a reason to be read. A book that I believe is a classic is, To Kill a Mockingbird, I have read this book twice for school. The first time I read this book I was in seventh grade and I fell in love with it. The second time I read it was in high school but it felt like I was reading it for the first time all over again. The second time around I knew the plot of the story but I started to discover the underlining messages in the book and began to truly understand the reasons why it was written. The book began to teach me lessons in life and how to change how I see the world.

Another point that Calvino made was that when we read books in our youth we do not treasure the books as much until you become older and more mature. When we get older we understand more about the world and the hardships of humanity. When I read To Kill a Mockingbird the second time I was a few years older, and began to understand the more complex issues of the book because I had learn more in depth about the time period where the book had taken place in my high school history class. When you get older you have a better understanding of the conflicts which characters face in books. The older we get the more life experiences and more struggles we face and we begin to relate with the characters in books.  When a person relates with a book it can teach them more about their life, and question the way they think it becomes a personal relationship between the book and the reader. Most of the books that become classics have themes that are very universal and relatable. A classic is a book that sticks around for hundreds of years because people have formed that personal relationship with the characters in books and have a true understanding of the meaning of the books.

Calvino, Italo. "Why Read the Classics."Why Read the Classics? New York: Pantheon, 1999. 3-9. Print.