Monday I had the pleasure of attending the premiere of James Franco’s adaption of “As I Lay Dying” at the Lyric. I must confess I haven’t reread the book since my AP History class, and some of the scenes caught me off guard.I’m not sure if I had forgotten parts of the book or if I did not fully grasp some of the concepts when I read it 10 years ago. Not to discredit the wonderful English teachers who assigned us a wide variety of great literature, but many of the books I read I did not fully appreciate when I read them.
I am a part of the Sparknotes/Internet generation and having all that knowledge at your fingertips brings about the temptation to be lazy. Generally speaking, given the option to be lazy, a fifteen year old will always be lazy.
Mrs. Shoemake would assign our AP History class to read a stack of classic literature and quiz us on the important themes. I have always been a bookworm and made a good faith effort to read all the books we were assigned. That being said, when it was the night before a quiz with only half the book finished I certainly took to the internet to find out what the conch symbolized in “The Lord of the Flies.”
Yes, it was lazy. Yes, Mrs. Shoemake would have been incredibly disappointed if she knew, but I had more important things to do, like go to Sonic with my friend who just got her license. I could mull over the societal criticisms in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” or I could google (I’ll be honest: I think I had to “Ask Jeeves,” but I didn’t want to show my age) and pile in my friend’s older sister’s 1998 Jeep Cherokee to travel to an away football game.
Looking back, I wish I had paid more attention to the books I was assigned to read. I wish I had come to my own conclusions about the characters in “The Old Man and the Sea” instead of using Sparknotes so I could go watch a movie with my crush. So many great books are wasted on eye-rolling teenagers.
The Mrs. Shoemakes of the world try their best to instill a love for reading and appreciation for difficult books that force you to think, but they are greeted with kids who turn in half-thought out analyses supported by Wikipedia.
Maybe they take comfort knowing that sooner or later their kids will grow up and want to go back and reread those books and delve even deeper into great literature? Perhaps I’ll sit down and write Mrs. Shoemake a letter, but I’m terrified of what autocorrect and WordPerfect-induced laziness has done to my grammar.
Anna Rush is a law student from Hattiesburg. She graduated from Mississippi State University in 2011.
