If You Need to Understand English Literature, You Will Need the Bible

If You Need to Understand English Literature, You Will Need the Bible Photo by Samantha Sophia ‘Oh miss, Shakespeare is so difficult to understand! I don’t understand The hobbit!, can we read Persuasion again?’ –those were the comments of my students during the year, in some of the many books-authors we read in class. See, most of English literature is bible-Christian based, meaning that you will know the author’s point of view only after knowing the bible’s principles†¦ -King James Version. The thing is that since a couple of years, the bible reading has been taken out from the schools and therefore their principles. Hold on, I’m not getting religious†¦ I just want to explain to you why this specific book is important to understand the English speaking culture. Over 50% of the English and American people don’t read the bible (and probably never will), but when you see the culture, either in the movies or books; you can see where it all comes from. In primary we had to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and I remember this chapters where Tom Sawyer had to memorize his bible verses†¦ during the ceremony on Sunday’s class, the teacher asked him the names of the two apostles and Tom said ‘David and Goliath’†¦ now, would you understand such joke if you didn’t know David’ story? –probably not. I remember reading Frankenstein in 7th grade, and it kind of broke my heart, because the author is somehow complaining upon his creator for being such monster himself. See, the creator didn’t mean to make him ugly and unlikeable, and in fact he loved him as a son; but the creation became sad since he was being pushed out for his appearances†¦ If you don’t know where the author is coming from with this idea, you might just think is kind of cool such story. But, if you visit the book of Isaiah 14 you will understand that Wollstonecraftis trying to excuse Satan from getting greedy and is giving a contrary point of view of the verses in the bible.