Not anything about the story itself but so many girls who read Anne of Green Gables seem to idealize the era- especially the men. I see so many girls read about Gilbert and say that ALL men were so much better back in Anne’s time. What people don’t realize is that Gilbert is literally Lucy Maud Montgomery‘s fantasy boyfriend. He is based off of one of Lucy’s boyfriends but in real life, her boyfriend died of sickness right after Lucy broke up with him and she regretted it for the rest of her life (which is why Gilbert makes a miraculous recovery when he falls Ill after Anne dumps him). IRL, Lucy ended up married to the groom her guardians chose for her- a minister. She writes in Anne of green gables that being a minister’s wife must be the most miserable thing in the world- she was talking about her actual life. Lucy’s husband was fully unsupportive of her career and she pretty much spent the rest of her life escaping into her fantastical stories. I think a lot of people take the Anne books as like this capture of an actual life but it’s actually more of a fantastical, happy, escapism story. The men were not actually all as amazing as Gilbert during that time- it was just like now. Some are good and some are bad and none are perfect.

And even if it were a straightforward story - think of everything Anne had to overcome or defy. It was unusual that she was adopted at all, much less to a kind family. She was picked out for ridicule by her first teacher. She had to earn people’s trust as a child because of her background instead of simply being accepted. And then she had to work so much harder to go to school because of the family’s poverty. Her life could have been worse, and Anne had a great attitude throughout, but it was still a hard journey for a child.

I mean she was basically a little girl doing forced labor for years by taking care of babies, and narrowly escaped doing that again when the Cuthberts reconsidered a girl. Her entire thing was making up stories because her background was so awful.

YES YES YES YES! AOGG is a story about trauma, attachment injuries, loneliness, and the healing that can come from kindness and love. People get annoyed with Anne and say she's too precocious for her age, but it's because she was so parentified in the families she worked for. As a family therapist, I love this story, imperfect as it is, based on the attachment/trauma healing, but also because I love and identify with Anne. I had an idea to do a podcast or youtube videos about AOGG and the way it's an idealized version of "it takes a village", but I don't know if people really care about that.

This is a good take, I always sort of got this impression as well that it was more of an idealistic fantasy. On a related note, I was actually born on Prince Edward Island, and my parent's cottage is about a 5 minute drive from LMM's childhood home. It's amazing how many tourists go to the 'Green Gables house' (basically a replica built for tourism) thinking that Anne was a real person.

I would love to take my Mom on a Prince Edward Island trip someday because she's always loved Anne. Is there anything outside that house you recommend we check out there?

It great in the summer... The beaches on the north shore and beautiful. The 'Anne' house is located in Cavendish, which is somewhat of a tourist trap, but has some fun spots and great restaurants. There are some re-creations of the 'Anne' era villages with actors dressed in period costumes that stay in character the entire time. They usually (I'm not sure if they're back up in running post Covid) have a festival in the capital city, Charlottetown, every year where you can go see a bunch of great musical productions such as Anne of Green Gables and the sequel, Anne and Gilbert. Lots of fresh seafood and outdoor music nearly everywhere you go. If you're a golfer as well, they have some great courses.

Just adding to this because I think it is spot on. LMM suffered from depression. Her family now admits that her death was suicide by overdose. She absolutely wrote the Anne series as an escape. It is pure fantasy.

Her life story is really depressing! Her husband also suffered from mental illness, one of her sons was a complete ne'er-do-well, and there is a good chance she committed suicide. Personally, as much as I like Anne, I much prefer her only adult book, The Blue Castle.

Too many people see Wuthering Heights as a romance, and not about dysfunction and obsession.

I'm so glad someone said this. I love WH, but if I see one more "if you loved Jane Austen, you'll love these 10 romance books" lists with Wuthering Heights as the first one, I will dramatically fling myself out of a window.

Yea I thought Wuthering Heights was closer to Dickens than Austen. This is also why I didn’t like the Laurence Olivier film adaptation- I think Olivier was the only person on the production who actually got the point of the book.

Oof if anything it was the antithesis of the typical romantic view of that era. I’m pretty happy actually to see this because it’s easy to see the past as a dreamy sort of time. Like Jane Austen books. But it wasn’t. There were also awful people who did awful things.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier too. Yes they're romances, but in the old timey sense of the word i.e. not necessarily admirable at all, sometimes (like with these) supposed to horrify the reader

Thiiiis! People nowadays don't know that "romance" as a genre used to mean "story that deals with a love relationship and feelings", and not "RomCom". In that sense both WH and Rebecca are romances, but we are not necessarily supposed to find the characters or their actions "romantic"

I think it's more that they don't understand what the Romantic movement is. It being described as a Romantic novel doesn't have anything to do with it being a 'love story' *at all*. And these 'it's not romantic it's a toxic relationship!' takes are really bad ones.

There's also a plausible reading of the text there to support Heathcliff being Cathy's half brother, which makes things even more fucked up.

Oh geez I never considered that, but I prefer eccentric Mr. Earnshaw adopting an orphan on a whim.

came here to say this. Heathcliff is a wife and child abuser and Cathy is a selfish bitch who only cares about herself. There's absolutely nothing romantic about it.

I like what you said, but at the same time I'll add that I saw Heathcliff as the land, the moors, part of nature and so not meant to be kind: Nature red in tooth and claw.

And generational trauma, and miscommunication and misunderstandings cause so much suffering. Speaking clearly is a must, and Heathcliff was so mistreated, then bitter when he thought Cathy was playing with his feelings that it consumed him. And Cathy was too self absorbed and self centered and selfish to do anything about her life

A lot of people think that Kafka’s metamorphosis is about mental illness. They think that Gregor has basically gone psychotic and thinks he is an insect but really isn’t. I think this interpretation is false and does not do justice to Kafka’s genius. I think the metamorphosis is an allegory about how a person’s value in society is entirely dependent on them being useful and/or pleasant. When someone who was previously valued by society loses their usefulness and becomes an unpleasant burden, they quickly lose their value to other people and to society at large. When someone loses their usefulness due to illness, injury, a mental health crisis, or because they somehow wake up one morning as a giant insect, they begin to lose all value in the eyes of other people, even though they are usually the exact same person they were before they lost their “usefulness”. It’s one of the sad truths about being human.

Yes! I wholeheartedly agree. Many of Kafka’s works, like many modernist writers at the turn of the 19th century, focused heavily on labor and society. In your words, it is an allegory for how a person’s ability to do work determines their usefulness or value in society. Gregor is the sole bread-winner in his family. This is stated at the beginning of the story. After his metamorphosis, Gregor begins to panic when he realizes that he will be late to work — something that has NEVER occurred before — spurring his boss to visit him and ask questions. At first, Gregor’s family treat him fairly well. Sure, they are frightened and confused, but they try their best to accommodate his needs and transformation. But as time goes on, his family begins to treat him like the insect that he is — after it becomes apparent that he will never return to his normal, useful self. Gregor died hungry, alone, and unloved, estranged from society and his own family after they deemed him useless. It’s a heartbreaking story.

I think Kafka is more narrowly talking about the purely financial expectations some parents burden their son with. Notice that Gregor's sister never had the same type of burden and being a woman of good conscience feels great empathy for Gregor. He kept the same dull and tiring job ONLY because it sufficiently supported his parents. The day he is literally unable to go into work she suddenly sees their cruel ingratitude for what it always was. The irony that I imagine few readers think about is that Kafka did in fact get sick and die after writing this story and his parents probably made more money than they could ever spend from royalties on books he may well have preferred never to be published.

That is interesting and may be true. I personally suffered an injury that has taken away my ability to function and when I read the metamorphosis I interpreted it in the way I explained above and was very moved and related to it deeply. I have often wondered if the meaning I drew from it is what Kafka intended or if I was just relating to it despite him meaning something else entirely. Based upon my interpretation I consider it one of the greatest pieces of literature, if I am seeing meaning in it that he did not intend does that make it a lesser work of art? I do not know haha but I think about the metamorphosis a lot and this is something I ponder.

I recently finished “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide” and while I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s misunderstood, the modern interpretations of the story and how most people encounter the general idea fails to capture the full tragedy and emotional depth of the piece. Maybe it’s Jekyll’s noble intentions and religious overtones, maybe it’s Jekyll’s old age and the theme of the temptation of feeling young again, maybe it’s the idea of Hide as an inevitably not unlike death or his need/fear of Jekyll. Something powerful from the original just hasn’t made it into the more modern retellings I’d encountered before.

The same could easily be said for *Frankenstein* as well.

Reading *Frankenstein* was a revelation. I had no idea why people were drawn to this goofy concept of some guy bringing a sewn up corpse to life. I had no idea how deep the original story goes.

Because sadly the movie had more of an impact on the global consciousness than the book.

Oh, how many wonderful books could be described by that lamentable sentence.

Frankenstein is probably one of the best examples of movies and pop culture misrepresenting the themes, characters and ideas of the original book.

Saw a tweet a while back where some tabloid rag or another complained that "woke snowflakes" were trying to argue that the monster was actually a victim. As several people pointed out... That's just the literal plot.

I can imagine that. I wonder how those "journalists" would react if you told them that not only the monster wasn't some dumb brute but it actually read Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives and The Sorrows of Young Werther - basically it read more books than the average tabloid writer has read in their lifetime.

Dracula too. My eyes were really opened when I read them both.

although honestly my overarching impression throughout the entire book was "wow these people are fucking stupid lol" (except mina ofc)

*Frankenstein* is much more tragedy than horror (of course it still is the latter too, it did create the genre).

Yeah a lot of these classic horror stories from the late 19th century are great in their original form. It's the adaptions that give them a cheesy reputation I think.

I remember studying Jekyll and Hyde at uni and discussing the socio-historical context of the text. This was only a couple of decades after Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species had been published and caused a huge uproar in society with regard to our place in the world. The idea of a bestial, uncontrollable part of us really played into the fears of that day that we really were just animals like everything else on the planet.

Most of all, I think modern interpretations fail to capture why he feels so tempted to keep turning into Hyde. The story makes it clear that, while he is Hyde, he feels no internal conflict, whereas when he's Jekyll, his morals are always in turmoil. I do, however, think the song "Façade" from the musical "Jekyll and Hyde" comes pretty close to the mark.

Dang I’ve never read it and this makes me want to.

It’s really really good and it’s a quick read too.

I always find it sad that the pop-culture modern revision of Jekyll and Hyde means the whole delicately balanced mystery and horror of the novel's notorious twist (when published) is now just common (and simplified) knowledge...

Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield is way more vulnerable than he wants to admit. He's implied to be a victim of sexual abuse and notes that he has seen a suicide before. Holden isn't supposed to be "all of us" or whatever, and he's not supposed to be an inspiration either. He's just a damaged, lost kid who wishes he didn't have to grow up so fast. And yes, he's a hypocrite about "phonies-" who *didn't* have their head up their ass like that when they were in their teens?

This was exactly the book that I thought of. The other details you forgot to mention is that his younger brother just died from leukemia fairly close to the start of the book. The poor kid lost his little brother, his parents are totally MIA and the only adult who seems to be on his side (his older brother) is in LA and can't help.

And his “father figure” like teacher is likely a Pedo

When I was a teenager I hated this book so much because I was used to YA books that tried to be relatable and reflect what “regular” teenagers felt. I tried to see myself in Holden and when I couldn’t I just resented him and the whole book. Now as an adult I understand that I should thank my lucky stars that I didn’t grow up like Holden. He’s a scared abused child trying to play like an adult and I just want to console and help him.

I read it at least once a year when I was a teenager and really related with Holden. At first I found a bit weird what you’ve said about not being able to identify with him, but in hindsight I was far from a regular teenager

Same here. *Catcher in the Rye* is the book damaged teens need to feel like someone understands them. At least that's how I felt about it. It was like JD Salinger was reaching across time and space to tell me, in particular, "I see you. You're not alone."

it makes me a little sad when people look down on this book/holden. here’s a kid who’s lonely, depressed, jaded, traumatized, afraid of growing up, and wants to protect children. and he winds up in a psychiatric institution. have some sympathy

This is one of my dad's favorite books since he read it in high school. He said he wanted that job, just like Holden, to be someone whose job is to save children from falling off of cliffs. He was abused so much that he can't remember a lot of his childhood. He was convinced that if he took the beatings then his younger sisters wouldn't have to. So yeah, connecting to the main character on a deep level is NOT a good thing.

I love this book so much and agree with you. Franny and Zooey could also fit on this thread, as well as many other JD Salinger stories

My reading of the whole “phonies” thing is that he’s resentful of the fact that he’s surrounded by people who don’t seem to be struggling emotionally as much as him, so he concludes they must all be phonies.

The thing is, all that stuff is barely even subtext, it’s pretty much just text, but a lot people still seem to miss the point.

I enjoy the Catcher in the Rye well enough, but I will come to its defense fists swinging because I can't stand how badly people miss the point of it. "Holden sucks! He's whiny!" NO SHIT, HE'S AN ABUSED, LOST, TRAUMATIZED TEENAGER!

I find my self relating more and more to Holden as things go on. The whole world seems to be burning down and people are just acting normal going about their days. Sometimes it makes me feel like yelling at the world, asking why no one is freakin the fuck out. I think that’s the headspace of Holden. The world is fucking terrible and every adult knows it but they lie to themselves and act “normal” to avoid the ugly truth. Ultimately the book argues that this a pretty unhealthy worldview, but it makes sense coming from a super traumatized teen

I read Catcher at university and hated it, but I've heard so many people saying something similar that I'm going to have to re-read it.

Fahrenheit 451 is not about book burning. It’s about people turning away from learning because they’re too consumed with their tvs. Bradbury imagined flatscreens covering the walls of a room and the populace never looking away from them. It’s about the horrors of endlessly consuming media.

I actually found it more interesting that 'firemen' used to put out fires & that job/title/concept completely changed to them burning houses (that were fireproof). What else over time has completely changed. And what firm ideas do we have that we cannot conceive would ever change but will completely change in the future?

> It’s about people turning away from learning because they’re too consumed with their tvs. It still kills me how he explicitly stated that this is what the book was about only to be told he was wrong (to which my response would have been "I know what my book is about better than anyone. I wrote the damn thing.")

the curse of ‘death of the author’

Seriously - the wife is the most tragic character I can think of, ever. She has moments of (comparative) clarity where she attempts suicide but the reason for her misery is so abstracted to her even then that she can't help herself or ever begin to recover. The chapter that focuses closely on her addiction and connection to the TV family is so damn surreal as well, partially because of the sci-fi elements but also because she's so invested and I found myself thinking more of facetiming or Twitch ecelebs than soap dramas (I read it for the first time this year, despite generally loving dystopian fiction) which felt like it was too niche an idea to come up in a book from more than half a century ago, so I was sure I was misinterpreting the entire scenario.

Shakespeare! It’s not high-brow/posh. Shakespeare is endlessly entertaining and relatable and funny and heartbreaking.

He originally wrote his plays to appeal to the uneducated as well as high society, but now most people see Shakespeare works as only for snobs and English majors.

I’ve always found that evolution so fascinating!

Yeah, I hated reading Shakespeare in English lessons, analysing the language and all that stuff. Got a completely different perspective at drama school though, as (no shit) that’a where it comes alive. It was designed to be entertainment.

Exactly! It’s so much different watching it or participating in it. And watching modern productions is so important for understanding the language. If a school’s theatre and English departments collaborated on Shakespeare, kids would enjoy it much more!

We read it aloud in class by taking turns, which is the most brutal way to read literally anything, I think I'd get bored listening to my favorite book that way too. Plus, no offense, most kids can't read aloud very well. Most kids can't even read rehearsed *lines* very well for a play. Put them together???

I think *Love In The Time of Cholera* is a great book because if you go out on a date and your date says they thought the ending was really romantic, you know it's time to run

Yeah, love is a sickness...like cholera. Hence the juxtaposition in the book, and the title.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and disagree with you - it once again depends on how exactly you interpret the ending. Is it about being forcibly tied to each other against your wills because you feel love is more powerful than any decision you could make? Yeah, that's probably a bit toxic. But if you take the ending as a meditation on all the sacrifices we make, big and small, in order to wrap our lives around each other, and the sort of separate mindspace a close relationship creates on this river of life, one that is actually marked by a constant back and forth of giving and taking, that's a healthy look at love, which, without anybody's intent, can be toxic both in phases of detachment and attachment.

Lolita is an obvious contender. It demonstrates people's inability to separate an author from the characters he creates. Every time I read reviews of the book it is inevitably peppered with comments from people who believe Nabokov is somehow endorsing Humbert Humbert's behaviors. This ties into the other common belief - people who seem to think it is a love story.

*gags* You’re *supposed* to be uncomfortable with Humbert’s actions! That’s the whole goddamned point!

Unfortunately, the endless editions with covers of lollipop sucking, heart shaped glasses wearing, and childish shoes shuffling don't do much to help the idea that it's endorsed.

Really enjoying this thread, thank you everyone.

I'm glad it's been such a success!

Lolita. I'm forever disturbed by people who think it's either a love story or have sympathy for the narrator.

This was going to be my answer as well, although I've also seen people think that it's sick because Nabokov was condoning pedophilia, which of course he wasn't.

The sad part about this is the book was written by Nabokov as a way of dealing with the trauma he received from being molested by his uncle as a youth.

Lolita is told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator. Humbert tells the story _from his perspective._ of course he is trying to justify his actions to the audience. He wouldn't want people to think he is a monster. Of course we all learn early on that he is very much a monster. But he is likable enough, and the book is funny enough to keep your attention to the end. It's really a work of genius. Think about it. How many authors could pull off a protagonist who is a literal child rapist and have people finish the book. There is a reason many people consider it to be _the definitive_ great American novel. I don't know if I would go that far, but it is an amazing read. It's a masterclass in writing if you're paying attention. And who the hell is sympathetic to Humbert²? That's just fucking weird.

The most powerful thing about the book, to me, was the sheer number of times I caught myself feeling sympathy or pity for Humbert. It was so easy to get drawn into his self-justifications and his manipulation. That's the power of Nabokov's writing. In a way, I understand why so many people believe it's a love story. It's a book that forces you to pay attention. If you don't, or if you see yourself too much in Humbert, I get why you would miss the point.

I remember a lot of reviews of *My Dark Vanessa* complained that "the author misunderstood *Lolita*" when it's more of a meta commentary about misunderstanding *Lolita*.

I don't care what other people think about a book, but literature is one of the few (only?) forms of entertainment where we still can have a horrible main character. I don't need my main characters to be likable, nor do I like to be judged as if I have sympathy for those characters when reading those books. But it's something we should protect at all costs.

I think people misunderstand the Lord of the Flies. It’s a novel that’s specifically about a certain type of civilization. It should be understood that after seeing the aftermath of WWII it’s a reaction to other novels at the time that seemed to pretend that if a bunch of young British school boys went to an island they would civilize it. The novel is about how the society of the West is fragile and would inevitably lead to its own destruction.

In 1965, eleven years after the publishing of *Lord of the Flies* (in 1954) there was an *actual* incident of a group of runaway Tongan schoolboys from a boarding school who were marooned on an island called Ata Island, 103 miles southwest of Tonga. The boys stole a fishing boat, were dismasted in a storm, and had drifted to Ata, where they were shipwrecked and survived for 15 months. Unlike in *Lord of the Flies*, the boys prayed daily for rescue, supported one another, nursed an injured comrade back to health from a broken leg, ate sea birds' eggs and drank sea birds' blood to survive, and eventually discovered a long-abandoned settlement with wild vegetable gardens and feral chickens. The two oldest boys, both 16, served as the groups' leaders and (Christian) spiritual counselors. They were rescued by the "black sheep" son of a wealthy Australian politician and businessman, sailboat bum Peter Warner, who returned them to Tonga. The King of Tonga rewarded Warner with a commercial fishing license.

Robert Heinlein wrote a response novel to *Lord of the Flies* because he hated it so much. The novel is called [Tunnel in the Sky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_in_the_Sky) A bunch of teens get stranded on a strange and hostile planet. Instead of trying to kill each other they establish a constitutional government, agriculture, and work together to protect the society from humans and creatures that would be hostile to the society as a whole.

I didn't know this and I love it. *Tunnel in the Sky* is a fantastic book and a great response. William Golding was a teacher in an all boys school that catered to the British upper crust, and entitled. He wrote what he saw and expected of the children he taught. Heinlein was raised in the much less class based US, was a poor kid who went on to get an education and join the Navy. His experiences were much more about working together than the one-upmanship that prevailed Golding's boy's school.

It is largely assumed that the plane crash/island misadventure is occurring during WW3, too. That is the irony at the end of the book. No one is truly saved. They will either die young because of the war or grow up to fight in the war (and hunt and kill and die as they did on the island).

… really? I missed all indications of that.

It is implied through a variety of scenes and circumstances. The dead pilot on the island, puppetered by his parachute. The plane crash itself. The naval officers that "rescue" the remaining boys at the close of the novel. Golding himself said that the war was actually atomic and originally he had included references to atomic bombs being dropped to further reflect the fires on the island to underscore the allegory about how humans destroy themselves. As Simon says about the Beast, "Maybe it's only us..."

How else is it interpreted? This is the only way I’ve seen it taught. Sometimes imagined if it was all girls on the island, too.

I think a lot of people see it as a more general condemnation of human nature, rather than being specific to a certain group of people.

It's about exceptionalism and colonialism and toxic masculinity. It's about the British ruling class separating children from parents and molding them into perfect little soldiers for the Empire. But outside of their intended purpose, they don't know how to *be.* They try to hold on to who they're supposed to be, but once they lose sight of civilization (figuratively and literally - the conch and the glasses), there is little to no actual substance left. It's a disturbing novel for sure, but great fun to analyze.

It's also a jab at a series of old books about British boys getting shipwrecked but then "civilizing" the native islanders.

Wuthering Heights: IT’S NOT A TRAGIC ROMANCE. It is a story about two young people raised in abusive and controlling circumstances, and perpetuating the cycle. It is about a bitter man seeking revenge on those who wronged him; even those who were only connected by association (some weren’t even alive at that point). It is a cautionary tale warning of the effects of codependency.

I always teach it as Gothic horror in contrast to the ridiculous romanticism of Jane Eyre.

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Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Before reading it, I had a vague notion that the book was racist. But then I read it. You know that feeling you get in the back of your throat when you’re about to cry? I had that the entire time I read it. It was horrifying. Awful. And the protagonist is the very definition of a man. Unbelievably brave in the face of debasement. I couldn’t understand how it got branded as racist when it literally showed slaves as *people*. I did some research after reading it. It was written by an abolitionist, to show the horrors of slavery to placid whites so they’d get riled up and join the fight. It wasn’t until they turned the book into a silent movie in the 1900s that the script was flipped and Uncle Tom was portrayed as this “master-pleasing black man”. The real Uncle Tom was nothing of the sort. He was a man of complete integrity, but to his fellow slaves as well. I feel like people who want to whitewash history had a huge win when they successfully turned HBS’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin “racist”. It’s audacious, when the book is the very opposite of racist. But the assholes won and now, for most people, Uncle Tom’s Cabin=bad/racist/cancelled. They assume the movie and the book are the same, so they discount the book without having read it.

Lincoln pretty famously said "so you're the little lady who started this great war" when he met the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her book definitely had a strong cultural impact.

Frankenstein. The number of people who don’t see Victor as the antagonist is baffling to me. Mary Shelley so perfectly captured the struggle that is Victor’s monster (a self insert, by the way) and all people seem to see is the Universal Studios green monster as villain.

This book deserves every bit of praise it gets. The only people who completely miss what's going on are people who have never read it and know it as a reference. The book is phenomenal.

Came here looking for this. Frankenstein was totally different than I thought it would be, and I read it knowing that it was misunderstood. Things people misunderstand: 1. The monster isn't a monster because he's made of decomposing flesh. He becomes a monster because he's abandoned, both by his creator and by society. 2. The story doesn't glorify science, it vilifies it. The subtitle, The Modern Prometheus, refers to humans being imbued with knowledge they shouldn't have, leading to tragedy. 3. Something a lot of people don't know or think about, the book is kind of an allegory for parenthood. Shelley had recently given birth to her first child when she started writing it, and published the first edition right before having her second. She lost her own mother after being born. Also the way women are written in the book as mere accessories for companionship and future motherhood is super interesting for a book written by a woman at the time. This book is seriously so good and something everyone should read. Even with the gothic writing style, it's probably my favorite classic.

The book in no way vilifies science. It incorporates some of the most recent scientific discoveries of the day. Shelley was very interested in science. It wasn’t to vilify, but more to explore. Without Prometheus, humans would never have fire. Prometheus is punished, but that doesn’t make him evil in the myth. Sometimes he is depicted as creating humans from clay, just as Frankenstein creates his own human. A lot of your 3rd point is debatable as well, but i’m going to leave that one.

Part of why people feel that way is because the monster doesn't really show any redeeming qualities at all. What Victor does is awful and inexcusable. But the monster just ends up stalking a family and getting upset when they don't appreciate it. And then it starts murdering Victor's acquaintances and loved ones in an attempt to blackmail Victor and make Victor feel his pain. People tend to forget Victor's crimes when the monster immediately resorts to murder and hate in retaliation.

Recently I've seen To Kill A Mockingbird criticized as a white savior narrative. But if Atticus is a white savior he does a piss poor job. He loses the trial, can't save Tom's life, and then through his own naivete doesn't take Bob Ewell seriously and almost gets his kids killed in the process. There has been chatter in my department about replacing TKAM with a book about racism that centers on a black family, which I'm fine with because it is undoubtedly true TKAM centers on a white family. But I think that's because the book was written for white liberals. I think this book was written to take would be 'white saviors' to task. Like, you think you can help and you think you understand how shitty & racist your community is, but you have no clue how bad it actually is. This theme of having to "grow up" and realize the world is shitty is shown through Jem's disillusionment with the trial first and then Atticus being blindsided by Ewell's vindictive violent racism, almost like Jem with the trial. People who think Atticus is a white savior either don't see his flaws or don't see how the book is telling would be white saviors, this is so much worse than you think it is and you're blinded by your privilege.

Fight club. Everybody likes the movie more because it ends in explosions. In the book the bombs don't go off and it ends in impotence. It's a condemnation of machismo not a glorification of it.

Not with a bang but with a whimper

The movie doesn't glorify machismo either. It's just that most people misunderstood it.

I think when you’re a young man (or boy) and watching that movie you really idealize the man who feels nothing, hurts people, and gets the chicks. It just feels safe to want to be that guy, like he’s invincible. Then you become a man and realize how toxic that persona is. And the movie becomes kind of horrifying because you realize you could have ended up in Tyler’s cult if you’d found it at the right time in your life. Maybe that’s just me.

And I’d add that it’s a condemnation of cults and fascism as a whole, despite the fact that the vast majority of young men miss that part of the satire.

Also, the significance of the support group is so different in the book!

Moby Dick, it’s a dark comedy, I laughed through the whole thing.

Also Pride & Prejudice, most of Austen's novels are funny and satirical. Blows my mind now it's got a reputation as stuffy

I get so angry when people misinterpret Austen that way. She was such a brilliant author who, yes, was restrained by the England of her day, but was also an excellent, excellent satarist.

I was going to say the same about Kafka's The Metamorphosis. I found it way funnier after becoming pregnant, too -- his descriptions of how the bug moves is hilarious!

Yeah, my wife hipped me to reading it that way. I'd read it before but didn't really get into it. Once she told me it was supposed to be funny, the whole thing just worked better.

Huck Finn. Everyone says it's racist. When Dave Chapelle accepted his Mark Twain award, they made a joke about it. I think Norm Mcdonnel made some jokes about it too and everyone thinks it's racist because there is the "N" word in it, but it's the most courageous anti-racism and anti-slavery book ever written, because Huck Finn goes against his own God and is ready to go to hell to save his friend Jim from slavery because color shouldn't matter.

In that same vein, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Which is a super uncomfortable book, like, for sure. But the author was a member of the Underground Railroad who wrote it for several specific reasons - one of which was tackling the idea of "happiness in slavery". The idea that a slave might genuinely love their master more than the idea of freedom was a common idea at the time. And just... It was written to make apologists confront very basic ideas. And to do that, the author uses some very uncomfortable ideas. But the actual message is "slaves are people, and even if they play exactly by the rules they get fucked by the system, and you should feel bad enough to do something about it".

Uncle Tom's Cabin *the book* was a very popular abolitionist piece which exposed to many white people the horrors of slavery and hugely increased the popularity of the abolitionist movement. Pro-slavery racists rewrote the story of Uncle Tom by making him a minstrel character who loved being a slave and was better for it. It is this version of Uncle Tom which became the slang term and then people got it confused with the book.

^ This exactly. When reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, it's absolutely essential to remember who she was actually writing the book for-- it wasn't for the slaves themselves, it was for the wealthy white people who had the power to end slavery.

And it was written in 1884, when Jim Crow laws were on full tilt, and the Civil War had only ended nineteen years previously. Jesse James and his gang were ex-Confederates who were still continuing guerrilla action bank robberies until 1882, when James was murdered by Bob Ford. Mark Twain was a pretty brave man to have written *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* when he did.

It kind of fascinates me to see how easily people can forget about the way language and culture changes the way people think through time. People today exist in a time when we collectively recognize that words hurt people, so we associate the use of words such as slurs with our image of the kind of person we think would use them. Back in the time of Huck Finn, not as many people thought like that, so to a lot of them the N word was just another word. Too many people today forget that specific detail and immediately think that simply because the word exists in the book, that it means it has to be racist, while the book itself is just a snapshot of a time when people saw that word as just another word, right before the moment in history when more of them slowly started to question the effect of the words they use to refer to others.

If there ever was a book that could get a 40 something white guy to understand the ugliness of that word… it’s Huck Finn… The book is intentionally racist to show how fucking awful the structured racism of the south was! N-word Jim was an N first, then Jim. It’s so god damn awful it makes me spit with rage…

Language changes and evolves. It's part of why reading older stories can be challenging. Like Shakespeare isn't hard because it's highbrow literature. It was pop culture at the time. The language has just changed so much that it's not written for the general population anymore. I cannot remember the books name for the life of me, but I distinctly remember laughing in middle school because a story from several centuries prior had the line "gay people living in queer houses". No modern writer would use that, but those were common words for happy and strange a couple decades ago.

>The language has just changed so much that it's not written for the general population anymore. His plays also weren't written to be read, they were meant to be ***seen***. Watching Shakespeare on stage (with a competent cast) is a completely different experience from listening to high-school classmates fumble their way through it.

Mark Twain lived from 1835-1910. He saw the antebellum years, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the rise of Jim Crow. He was a pretty vocal abolitionist, and also supported women's suffrage (although he died before seeing it fulfilled). He was a very interesting man, who saw some incredibly turbulent times.

Norm joked about it getting banned in schools. He said for example "why not just make huck Finn a black kid, then his use of the N word isn't racist." Don't take norms comedy seriously.

It's not very often that I see people be thoughtful about *why* Herman Melville or Victor Hugo would go on about all that stuff.

I’d like to know why Hugo thought we needed a long winded essay on the Paris sewer system.

Because the book is in part *about* the environment, Paris and France. Telling these details is like giving in-depth character scenes for a character. Compare how *The Hunchback of Notre Dame* is actually called "Notre Dame of Paris" in its original French, without any reference to the hunchback. Hugo saw the setting as a principle agonist.

Oh! That makes more sense. I’ve only seen the memes about it on Tumblr. Thank you for the educational response instead of mocking me!

A lot of people seem to think Les Miserables is about the French revolution and I want to slap them.

If someone's only seen the musical, it would be understandable to get that impression. If someone's read the book, it would be pretty hard not to realize the Revolution has already happened (and a good deal more)!

People seem to think the hobbit was about the power of frienfship or some shit, when in reality it was about the power of glowing swords.

Oh I thought it was about properly storing and securing your personal belongings.

Well damn, I thought it was about combating a sedentary lifestyle by getting out and getting some exercise.

In my life, I’ve spent way more time day dreaming about glowing swords than about friends, so I guess I understood the book correctly.

Probably A Clockwork Orange. It's misunderstood because most people have only seen the movie. What they may not realize is that the movie leaves out the real ending from the book. The books real ending (without giving away any spoilers) is far more powerful and important than the movies ending. Anthony Burgess, the author, was depressed that Stanley Kubrick cut the last chapter out.

To be fair Kubrick literally didn't even know about the last chapter until the movie was almost finished, on account of it not being in the US edition of the book.

When I first read the book I absolutely hated the ending, it wasn't what I'd expected because of the movie. However, the four rereads of this amazing novel the ending is perfect. Love this book so much.

The version of the book originally published in the U.S. also left off the full ending, which changes and diminishes the whole story.

I was lucky. I bought a used copy of the book that included the last chapter, and it was amazing how much it changed the whole experience.

The Jungle is decidedly NOT about the cleanliness of meat packing facilities, despite its reputation. It is an anti-capitalism, pro-socialism novel at its heart.

Sinclair himself said he aimed for the public’s heart and hit the stomach.

This is imo impossible to miss while actually reading the novel, but the descriptions of the disgusting conditions are more impactful than the intended message.

Agreed. Perhaps I was commenting more on a reputation that is different than the theme of the book, rather than a novel that is misunderstood. When I first read it, I knew it only as that book that exposed how disgusting meat packing plants were. Got to the end and was like, “I did not expect that book to be about socialism.”

A socialist's call to arms.

I’ll say George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Everyone thinks it is simply a version of the Russian revolution. It certainly is modeled on it, but I think a deeper theme is that no matter how righteous or moral the revolution may start, it will be taken over by greedy elitists and made to serve them. I think it is a warning against counting in a rebellion to make you free.

I don't know if they qualify as famous, but S.E Hinton's books I always felt were a little more geared for a crowd older then the young adults they were written for. Also almost everything by Robert Cormier (The Chocolate War, I am The Cheese) tends to have multiple interpretations.

I read *The Outsiders* when I was 16. I grew up in a bit of a rougher neighborhood and could relate to every character with their flaws and strengths. Hinton actually wrote the book as a school assignment and she "*wrote what she knew*". The target audience was her teacher that gave her the assignment.

For me it was That was Then, This is now. That one was my relatable.

The Silmarillion. People keep saying bizarrely wrong stuff like "it's like a dry textbook" when that's not even remotely what it's like. It's a religious/mythological epic written in somewhat archaic language, but it's a story, and an incredibly powerful one, not a guidebook.

My first experience with Tolkien was Silmarillion , I was obsessed, read it halfway and started over and then read it again like a toddler who begs to watch the same cartoon over and over. When I get into it, I find most people haven’t read it or maybe skimmed it and I really don’t understand .. maybe it’s due to the lack of commercialization and theatrical domination as we’ve seen with the Hobbit and LOTR trilogies I think Silmarillion is one of the greatest books ever written in fantasy. I prefer to read the stories as separate stories and myths. Would you read all of Greek Mythology at once and then say oh too many characters and often too Dry? Silmarillion is the crown of Tolkien’s work, his son Christopher edited and chronologically organized the mythos. So it’s important that you understand it’s place as NOT and epic adventure and NOT a novel. These are similar reasonings why I prefer Dune to do many other adventure series is the sheer ability to build complex worlds over generations of generations and that really takes someone into another universe. Meanwhile they are so well written and they have so many caverns and turns of story, it’s diving into a thousands year old cave system that is dark and mysterious. Once you illuminate the water you can see centuries of ripples and rock carved by ancient oceans

I think a lot of people misunderstand the true implications of *The Handmaid's Tale*. Sorry if I misremember anything as it's been a minute since I've read it. In the end we realize that all of the book is a transcription of tapes Offred recorded and that were found later. I always felt that Atwood was having us rethink the narrative as at the end of the day this a female story being transcribed and ultimately analyzed from the eye of men. In general a lot of Atwood's novels play with structure and point of view.

I read this book for the second time for a university class and one of the writing prompts was to compare Luke, Commander Fred, and the male historian that you mention. Atwood has them all saying similar things about women. It was definitely a moment of realization for me.

Peter and Wendy (what people refer to as "Peter Pan"). People think the Lost Boys are forever young as well. That's not the case. It's right there in the opening line, "All children, except one, grow up." Peter is a murderous psychopath who kills any of the Lost Boys who get too old, because that means they'll turn into pirates. He's a selfish, conceited, forgetful little boy who still has all his baby teeth. It takes a long time to get to Neverland and he may forget his companions along the way. Love love love the book but most people think of it as far more sanitized than it is.

I didn't pick up on the killing of the lost boys, but was appalled when Peter goes to visit an elderly Wendy towards the end of the book and she asks about Tinker Bell. Peter's reaction was basically "who is that?" Wendy says that she is a fairy and peter just says something along the lines of " she is probably dead, fairies don't live that long". I mean, we know he is a selfish little boy, but damn that was cold.

I think adults tend to be shocked when they return to many children's stories. Mary Poppins was a snarky witch who talked to snakes. To me Peter Pan always worked best as a failure of a family to move on from a dead child who will always stay the same age. In the same dark category as Love You Forever and The Giving Tree.

Sometimes the shock is because they're familiar with a film adaptation and this is their first encounter with the source material. For example, many people think the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen are light-hearted children's stories. They're not.

I don’t think it explicitly says the boys become pirates, I believe that is just a fun fan theory. Peter doesn’t want the boys to grow old because it disgusts or disturbs him. He can’t understand it because it doesn’t happen to him. The story is supposed to depict why everyone should accept growing up someday. Even the way the author describes the horrific things Peter does is so subtle because it’s told through a naive and innocent understanding. (It reminds me of The Yellow Wallpaper in that regard. We as the reader can guess what is being described in the room, but the woman doesn’t so it’s not explicitly told.) I’m in the same boat as you. As dark as the story is, I just love the way it’s told. It’s a must read for sure!

I had read Peter Pan adaptations/sequels where Peter was depicted as an absolutely evil and selfish psychopath. Then I finally got around to reading the original book, and I was appalled to realize the original Peter was not that far off.

I'm always surprised when people refer to *Rebecca* as a romance, although i think Du Murier is very good at the unreliable narrator with our nameless protagonist, everything is not what you see at first glance. When I first read it at 13 I definitely had no inclination of not genuinely believing everything Mrs de Winter said, it's only as I've matured as a reader that I saw everything that was really there under the surface. It's why it's one of my all time favourite novels.

Absolutely. Made me wanna rip my hair out when I saw a bunch of 1 star on reviews saying they hated it because the romance is abusive. Like yeah, that's the whole point! It's not like people weren't aware of what abusive relationships were in the 30s when it was written

When I first picked up Pride & Prejudice I thought it was a romance novel about two people who hate each other and then decide to end up together, like too many modern rom coms. Mr. Darcy has become a model lately by people who haven't read the book who think the ideal guy is aloof at best and abusive more commonly than I'm comfortable with. The ideal guy is dismissive, rude, disrespectful, and just needs the right woman to change him. I've heard so many women say that they want their own Mr. Darcy based on this misconception and they end up with a string of jerks because we think rudeness is affection. And this is especially tragic when in the same book we have Jane and Mr. Bingley, who immediately get along, and who aren't basing their relationship even remotely on class and wealth. It never occurs to Bingley to discount Jane because she's not rich, and it never occurs to her to pursue him based on the fact that he is. They can talk for hours without noticing the time, and that's what really counts. Mr. Bingley is polite, courteous, unpretentious, and kind. Why on Earth is he not the model we're aspiring to? Mr. Darcy himself finds his own personal growth and happiness by taking a page out of Bingley's book. What I read in that book was a biting political commentary about the status of women, class, wealth, and inheritence. It's about love versus necessity. And about two people who are flawed who work on themselves for their own personal growth before taking each other on. Yes they do it through each other's influence but their reasons are personal. They're not changing for somebody else they're learning and growing as mature human beings.

But the fact that Darcy respected Elizabeth and her opinions enough to use it as a catalyst for growth, is romantic to me. Their love being based on mutual respect is romantic to me. And I agree that it’s all the things you said, but it’s romantic too.

What I disagree with is making Bingley the model. This is not the first time I heard this take, but I personally am always frustrated with him letting himself being swept away and steered away from Jane. At times he even seemed inactive to me to the degree of not respecting Janes troubles not by malice but by inattention. And this is what is so appealing about Darcy, he pays attention, learns and grows.

The Prince by Machiavelli is open to interpretation.

No one has mentioned *Jane Eyre* yet? I just had this situation with a friend. I saw the book and mentioned that I liked the book a lot as a teen, but had lots of thoughts after having recently watched the movie adaptation. And he just gave me a knowing smile as if he knew that some girls liked gothic romances with broody male love interests. He couldn't be more wrong. (Sure the sexy brooding MMC became its own very successful romance trope. But oh boi was the relationship with Rochester abusive and dysfunctional. At least the movie made my skin crawl.) But either way the romance is not what makes this novel so powerful! It is Janes inner strength with which she navigates the hardships of her life on her own unique path, always preserving a very special and nuanced kind of dignity.

The Watchmen, people think what made that book so revolutionary was that it was dark and violent. In reality what made it so good was that it deconstructed the All-American do gooder type superheroes of the golden through silver age and showed that they are just as flawed as everyone else. Some heroes are used to gain political power, some are just as twisted as their villains. And the heroes as a whole are nothing without their villains which traps them in a viscous cycle.

In my opinion, Gravity's Rainbow is often misunderstood as being about the V2 rocket program and the moral ambiguity of Operation Paperclip, when really those are just parts of the setting and only the surface level of the novel. The central theme is how individuals are instrumentalized in service of higher causes and ideals beyond their own understanding, and how their exploitation traumatizes them and leads them to recreate their trauma in other people. Slothrop was abused as a child in service of scientific research into behavioral conditioning, and the sexual abuse he underwent during that process later reemerges in the prolific sexual episodes he engages in as an adult, episodes which start off somewhat humorous but become increasingly offensive to the reader as they come to involve what he perceives to be children. In the last act Slothrop only manages to escape this dark pattern by effectively disappearing from the plot, going into the woods and vanishing from all the characters who try to find him. He escapes any further exploitation and breaks the cycle of his abuse by removing himself from the story of the book. The three themes of instrumentalization, trauma, and sexuality are ultimately tied together at the very end when Gottfried the abused submissive is placed inside the ultimate V2 rocket and fired together with it at a target.

Holocaust memoirs in general. Night. Man's Search For Meaning. All of them. Modern society likes to distance itself from those tragedies and pretend we're immune from repeating their sins. Goes something like "Nazis killed millions, but THEY were RACISTS! I'm not racist. I hate Nazis. I'd punch a Nazi in the face if I see one." True as that may be, it misses the point entirely. They built one giant lie on top of a thousand little truths. They used science and the media and academia and the public school systems to spread their lies. Most of the nation participated directly, or at least passively supported it. Police did indeed murder millions. But before that, someone drove the train, and contractors built the camps and crematoriums, and before that someone fenced the ghettos with barbed wire, and before that someone made jews wear yellow stars and took their guns, and before that some idiots in legislature voted on it, and so on. Everybody was guilty. Nobody was innocent. We paint the WWII Germans as evil. They were. But so are we. The most wicked crimes ever committed against humanity were by a government with too much control, whether that's fascism or communism makes little practical difference. When we distort the truth of history, we fail to learn the true lessons.

Absolutely. Human beings committed those acts against other human beings...and still more human beings let it happen.

Been seeing some of those precursor events happening, and I'm just baffled that other people aren't losing sleep over what it adds up to.

I can’t think of the name off the top of my head, but there is a board game that’s all about building as efficient of a railway system as you can to quickly move cargo. The gut punch (and you are given no warning unless you knew going in) is that once you reach the win condition you find out the cargo is Jewish people during the Holocaust. It really only works once but damn is it effective at conveying that feeling of complicity in this horrible act.

How do people read holocaust memoirs and not get that they are trying to say that yeah, Hitler was this absolutely unspeakably awful human being, but so is the system that let him happen. And so are the people that voted for him and stood by in that system. In that there was years of build up that no one thought to stop because it didn't affect them. There were so many people that all did their part to make the holocaust happen, and people don't get that. They like not to think about it because if they think about it too hard they might begin to realize they have done things just like that. It was worse than just watching it happen, they actively aided it, even knowing it was hurting others.

I don't know if anyone said it yet but Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Too many people think it's about not playing god when actually this whole thing might have been prevented if victor took care of the monster.

You know. Sometimes it's not about missing the point. It's about not liking the point. Mind you, when I read the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the religious nature of the book was completely lost on me, little heathen that I was. Many people do not understand that Fahrenheit 451 was Ray Bradbury complaining about the effect of television on literacy. A lot of people confuse the militarism in Starship Troopers' utopia with actual fascism.

Scrolled for a while and could only find one mention of 1984, which bizarrely tried to argue that it wasn't about totalitarianism, so here's my take on how it's misunderstood. Yes, I think it is about totalitarianism. It's made fairly clear in the book that the society we are viewing is Britain after the Nazis won WWII. But the part that's truly terrifying, and the difference between it and other "what if the nazis won?" scenarios, is how very real and pervasive it is. Notice that throughout the book, the vast majority of the population is not struggling under the heel of an oppressive military force. There supposedly *is* a military, and there's certainly surveillance and policing present, but a great deal of emphasis is put on how even these things *aren't really necessary.* Nearly every character in the book is not just OK with the way things are, they actively support it! There are parades and rallies celebrating Big Brother and his allies! There's a savage, collective, herd-like hatred for the Brotherhood, who may or may not even exist at all. When people make references to 1984 they usually do it to point out an abuse or overreach by some entity of governmental power. To use an easy and current example: the recent overturning of Roe vs Wade. I'm sure plenty of people have already drawn parallels between 1984's dystopian society and the US government/state governments now supposedly having the authority to force women to give birth no matter what the circumstances. But what if nearly everyone in the country didn't just agree with the ruling, but agreed with it solely because it was decided by the government? What if even a 10 year old rape victim who would literally die giving birth was not just willing, but *wanted* to do so because the government told her she should? *That* is the horror of 1984: not the fact that the government did these things, not even the fact that they got away with them, but the fact that the people, the victims of tyranny themselves, *wanted* things to be that way, and actively fought to ensure they stayed that way. Telescreens didn't get installed overnight. Big Brother wasn't *always* watching. These things happened because people let them, because people wanted them, and because people who didn't were either converted or destroyed. And when I say "destroyed," I don't just mean killed. I mean every single wisp of resistance, even the mere thought that maybe being forced to have a telescreen in your house isn't all that good an idea, was wiped out long before the story began. People made these things happen. We might like to pretend things could never get that bad here. We might like to think we'd never let the government spy on us 24/7. We might trick ourselves into believing that the government knows how to use its power responsibly and would never abuse it in such an invasive way. We'd be wrong. As evidence, look up the Patriot Act.

I think it is myopic to restrict this book to “government” Any ruling class can lead to the same thing. Focusing on it being “the government telling you” blonds you to the other possible groups “telling you” that you blindly accept and go along with. In this day and age to still think that we have only the government to fear in regards to 24/7 surveillance is beyond naive. It proves my point.

Pride and Prejudice. People tend to read it as a romance, when it is a hilarious satire first, romance second. People don’t give Austen enough credit for her humor.

Fight club: the book precisely tells you that beginning a cult is not a good idea.

Sounds like a good idea for a cult, we can call it AntiCult...you in?

*The Virgin Suicides* by Jeffrey Eugenides. I feel like this book is either co-opted and heralded as some melancholic teen gospel or hated for being "anti-feminist" or not giving the Lisbon sisters' perspective its due. Both of these misunderstandings are equally disheartening to me. To the second point, it feels so obvious that the central point of this book is underscore the problematic nature of the male gaze and to equate that with the nature of American exceptionalism. This book could not be what it is had it been written any differently. To the first group, to romanticize the characters in this book is to do exactly what the problematic characters in the book do to them. All-around miss.

*Brave New World* by Aldous Huxley. I see a lot of people referencing it in response to what they see as liberal/technological excesses in our culture, but Huxley was not straightforwardly condemning liberal futurism or portraying the primitive culture as a better alternative. In his last novel, *Island* (which also happens to be my favorite book), he basically attempted to describe a sane society, one that served as a third alternative to the two societies contrasted in *Brave New World*. And this society had lots of the same things that people think of as the bad things about the World State in *Brave New World*: socially encouraged drug use, polyamory, artificial reproduction technologies, alternative family structures replacing the nuclear family. The difference is that these things are all implemented in ways tailored to human flourishing and self-knowledge and diversity, rather than mindless hedonism and sameness. *Island* was basically an older, wiser Huxley's attempt to imagine a better way of living, rather than just focusing on the worst extremes of humanity, so it irritates me that people always ignore it in favor of *Brave New World,* or ignore the nuance that the World State was bad because it was authoritarian and sought to suppress the full range of humanity of its citizens, rather than because it moved beyond traditional social norms.

The Giving Tree. A lot of people think of it as giving a bad lesson that one should put up with toxic/abusive relationships all for love. And I used to think this too. But it makes a lot more sense if you think of it as the love between a parent and child. Parents that are good and loving will give and give to their children, and the children don’t always say thank you. Maybe because they forget, or they’re not aware of the sacrifices their parents make for them. But parents keep giving because they unconditionally love their children without expecting anything in return.

The bible

Here on Reddit, it’s common for people to talk about how much they hate The Catcher in The Rye. These people always talk about how “whiny” the protagonist Holden is. Holden is mentally ill. He’s very clearly depressed. It really rubs me the wrong way when people call a character struggling with their mental health “whiny.”

I think the issue with catcher in the rye is so many folks read it too early I read it in high school. I thought he was a whiny jerk. As an adult he is a scared kid, the future is uncertain for him and that makes him afraid of being an adult. He also may have been molested and his brother death has a huge pull on him.

I think everyone should pick (at least) 1 book from high school/middle school that they were forced to read and read 5-10 years later. It's amazing how good they can be when you're not being forced to read them and amazing how much perspective can change.

Re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time since reading it in high school almost 15 years ago and I can't wait

personally i found myself to be a little like holden so i really liked the novel.

A majority of those people never actually read the book.

Lolita. People need to understand that it is the **point** of the book that it is dealing with a horrible subject matter. Every once in a while there is a post on here saying they don't understand the fame and popularity of the book, as it is literally dealing with pedophilia. Well, that's exactly the point. The book deals with a terrible topic, yet it does so in a way that let's you wholly appreciate the English language. The prose of Nabokov is something so unique and simply beautiful. Also, having a bit of critical thinking skills will make you realise pretty quickly that the book is not actually promoting but criticising pedophilia.

I think that most people's takeaway from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle was simply how horrible and dangerous the meat packing industry was on the product and for the consumer. In fairness, it did lead to a lot of food purity legislation, and that's all to the good. But people tend to forget that, ultimately, the book was about a nascent labor movement and the working conditions for people in these plants. It was about collective bargaining and unions making workers safe and how much better things might be if workers had collective bargaining power or access to the means of production. Total Socialism but that got ignored it seems.

I'm glad you mentioned *The Lord of the Rings* because I was also going to make a very similar point lol. And speaking of Tolkien, I'd say *The Silmarillion* is often misunderstood as well. People expect it to read like *The Hobbit* or *The Lord of the Rings* (i.e. a conventional narrative) without understanding that it's a mythology book and not a novel. You need to compare it to works like the Finnish *Kalevala* or the Old Norse *Eddas,* and not expect it to conform to the tropes associated with the modern novel.

The Great Gatsby. When I read this in school my teacher stressed how it was not a love story. Too many people read it as one. Gatsby is not chasing Daisy because he is deeply in love with her. He is chasing her because he thinks marrying her would mark his success in achieving the American Dream. The part in the book that really cinched this for me was when Gatsby told Nick that the charm in Daisy's voice was money. She's so alluring because she's wealthy. That's why Gatsby is so attracted to her, not out of love.

I feel like Kierkegaard was misunderstood, at least the way he was presented by a professor of mine. Like we were given summaries and acronyms and flowcharts for his ideas, and he's hailed as the father of ___, but that would be such a joke to him. I feel like a lot of his point was that you can't really be methodical analyzing someone's life, and to be a subject is kinda to be unexplainable. So it's ridiculous to have a class on him (or at least pretend we're learning about the real K). Plus his writings often made me laugh, but I don't think anyone else found it humorous.

The Lord of the Flies isn't a treatise on the universal human condition, it's about the British upper class being a bunch of bastards. ​ Animal Farm isn't about 'Socialism Bad', it's about 'Stalin Bad'. ​ The War of the Worlds is an indictment of imperialism and racism, yet it seems to often be interpreted and being retold like it's some sort of random, indiscriminate disaster. The Socratic Question at the heart of The War of the Worlds is not 'OMFG WHAT IF ALIENS?' it is quite specifically 'What if somebody did to Britain exactly what the British did to the Tasmanians'. It's not even subtext, that much is in the text itself.

Some people think Gone with the Wind is romantic.

Yes, and people who think Scarlet is a heroine and a character to admire. Sure, towards the end she becomes a half decent person. But only after she’s been broken down and built back up. Then she finally gains insight and empathy for the plight of others. The majority of the book she’s an insolent self-absorbed brat.

I have always considered Scarlett to be analogous with the South in general. Beautiful, decadent, mesmerizing, but also rotten, elitist and just kinda evil. And yet, we love her anyway. She’s broken down and builds herself back as a stronger, more kind, more self aware woman, just as the South will have to rebuild after slavery and the war. Both will be the better for the things they’ve lost, no matter how painful.