Finding Meaning in Literature and Life

Have you ever wondered why we read so few “happy” books in high school English classes? Trying to answer this question inspired the new AP Literature and Composition course I’m teaching this year.

When planning English courses, I have struggled to find books that offer sufficient rigor without being overwhelmingly dark or steeped in suffering. There are Shakespeare’s comedies (though most students need the jokes explained), Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, and…not much else. The great writers, the ones worth studying in a classroom, usually try to write the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. No one lucky enough to live a long life escapes pain. 

And yet, in my experience, the people who move through life with ease are never those whose lives have been easy. Several years ago, I taught a student who had endured a personal tragedy during ninth grade. Though this girl had suffered, her analysis of literature was consistently optimistic. When we read Persepolis, she wrote about how hope was more powerful than fear; when we read The Great Gatsby, she wrote about the beauty of dreams, even those that don’t come true. She was experiencing literature in the way I do: as a guide through suffering, towards meaning.

When I told this student about my idea for an Advanced Placement Literature course about the ways literature can teach us to find joy and meaning in our lives, she was excited to help me think about the class and choose a title. (We went with “Diamonds Formed Under Pressure.”) When I showed her my course description, she gave me a piece of feedback that I’ll never forget: while I had written about finding joy and meaning despite our suffering, she pointed out that we are able to find joy and meaning because of our suffering. 

“AP Literature and Composition: Diamonds Formed Under Pressure” is underway for the first time this year with a delightful group of seniors. We are reading books, short stories, and poetry that I love and that meet the College Board’s standards for rigor. These books are works of art: the authors’ use of language is as essential as the stories they contain. And it turns out that writers as varied as William Shakespeare, Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf, and James McBride have similar ideas about the paths to joy and meaning in lives filled with loss and longing. 

The literature we are reading is challenging in both form and content, and my students are rising to the challenges. As always, I have learned so much from their insightful questions. When is it best to move on from trauma, and when is it necessary to remember and keep the past alive? Are we more defined by our thoughts or our actions? What roles do love, family, and community play in healing when humans have suffered seemingly beyond repair?

Most interesting to me (though maybe not to them!) have been our discussions about the inventive ways that great writers represent human experience through language. We have experienced the consolations that art offers when history and memory fail.

Overall, we have become a joyful classroom community. This is what I love most about teaching at Dana Hall: the joy that our students feel being together in a classroom, day after day, challenging themselves to take on new perspectives, to navigate complexity and paradox, to speak up in disagreement, and to feel for people who live in their imaginations.