As my son and I walked through the snow to school the other day, we discussed where he was in his reading of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird which had been assigned in his English class. The more we talked about the book, the greater the mixture of emotions I felt as I moved among excitement, pride, nostalgia, and joy. What was it about this book that evoked this amalgam of feelings in me? More generally, why is it that we experience this same mixture of emotions when we watch our children encountering certain books for the first time?
In the case of To Kill A Mockingbird, was it the book itself or Gregory Peck forever etched in our minds as Atticus Finch? As embarrassed as I am to admit, I had not read this classic until I was in my 30’s, so it was not some warm recollection of myself at his age. Maybe part of the reason that I was heartened he was reading this book was that it would allow us to discuss the blatant racism and the struggle for civil rights I saw growing up in Kentucky in the 1960’s. Or possibly, it was that as a parent, I could both empathize with and admire Atticus as he attempts to be a good father and teach Scout some of the painful lessons of injustice. Maybe it was the memory of sadness I experienced when I put the book down after finishing it.
Perhaps, it’s the power of literature to evoke all of these emotions in us that compels us to read certain books. (Obviously, other forms of art can have a similar impact on us as we can all attest when our children discover music or movies that we enjoyed when we were their age.) It is one thing to read and love a book on one’s own: there’s a borderline illicit pleasure we experience as we become absorbed in the plot and fall for the characters in any great book, whether it be Odysseus in The Odyssey or Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. We have these people to ourselves, and we are in uncharted territory, unsure what will happen next. However, as much as we love that experience, it is magnified when we witness our students and our children have that same thrill for the first time and we watch them open new doors. This feeling is partially vicarious, but it is also the warmth of watching our loved ones being happy and growing up. There is a Yiddish word, kvell, that means to rejoice or exult, and maybe this is what we feel when we watch them cheer for Frodo in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy or cry for Francis Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
While there be many debates over what constitutes a classic, and these arguments are interesting and healthy, maybe one of the best definitions is that the book must be good enough to induce us to feel joy when we watch those of another generation open the cover and turn the first page. We may also feel a touch of envy and even some sorrow that we will never again read To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time, and that’s all right too.
