The study of literary merit appeared to be a study of questions. Finding answers to these questions as a senior in high school seemed challenging and maybe just a bit too ambitious. I was pulled down a rabbit hole. The swirling mass of ideas, questions, and conclusions continually contorting and transforming themselves into the most dizzying of arrays. After I found my footing at the bottom of the hole I looked around and saw that what had pulled me down was what I saw at the bottom, questions. Yet I began to realise the impact that those questions had on my studies. These questions have morphed and influenced so many different cultures but each and every one of those cultures altered them, even just a bit, to fit their unique perspectives.
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S.E. Hinton’s book The Outsiders certainly has many elements that are rooted in the outcast mentality that Holden simultaneously embraces and uses as a shield. That questioning of conformity that both Ponyboy and Holden do so well. As well as the feeling of isolation even when surrounded by people. The need for someone, anyone to just stick around and listen. Ponyboy describes himself at the beginning, as a book and movie lover stating on the very first page, “And nobody in our gang digs movies and books the way I do. For a while there, I thought I was the only person in the world that did. So I loned it” (Hinton 3). Holden understood loneliness whether it’s calling up a prostitute only to ask if she could “chat for a while,” or sitting in a bar and asking the guy next to him to, “Have one more drink,” because holden was “lonesome as hell” (Salinger 51, 165). Both Ponyboy and Holden don’t feel like they belong to the places they are in and because of that they’re lonely, isolated from people they identify with. S.E. Hinton used her knowledge of J.D. Salinger 's book The Catcher in the Rye as inspiration for her work. The New York Times article “The Outsiders: 40 Years Later.” talks about her echoing The Catcher in the Rye along with many other popular writers …show more content…
In her article “What Makes a Book a Classic”, Laura Miller debates how a book is made a classic and questions why some famous works of literature aren’t considered classics yet. She goes through the typical checklist that the College Board has given to help guide in deciding which books warrant classic status and which ones will be relegated to fiction. Presumably until the book’s author dies or someone makes a convincing argument for it to be moved or maybe until the book just drifts there on its own. Miller’s article doesn 't come to a nice conclusion of what literary merit is. For one Miller states at the beginning of her essay that trying to pin down a single definition for literary merit is a, “mostly pointless question, fodder for overcaffeinated undergraduate bull sessions...and other milieus suffering under the delusion that we can arrive at an ironclad consensus of what constitutes literary merit” (Miller). Through her search for what could possibly be used to nail down an “ironclad” definition for literary merit she comes across multiple different answers (Miller). Some say it’s the obvious test of time, others suggest that the book achieves “some form of aesthetic near-perfection”, and yet others say that a classic book is one that moved them (Miller). It seem that there isn’t a single agreeable definition of literary merit or some special
S.E. Hinton’s book The Outsiders certainly has many elements that are rooted in the outcast mentality that Holden simultaneously embraces and uses as a shield. That questioning of conformity that both Ponyboy and Holden do so well. As well as the feeling of isolation even when surrounded by people. The need for someone, anyone to just stick around and listen. Ponyboy describes himself at the beginning, as a book and movie lover stating on the very first page, “And nobody in our gang digs movies and books the way I do. For a while there, I thought I was the only person in the world that did. So I loned it” (Hinton 3). Holden understood loneliness whether it’s calling up a prostitute only to ask if she could “chat for a while,” or sitting in a bar and asking the guy next to him to, “Have one more drink,” because holden was “lonesome as hell” (Salinger 51, 165). Both Ponyboy and Holden don’t feel like they belong to the places they are in and because of that they’re lonely, isolated from people they identify with. S.E. Hinton used her knowledge of J.D. Salinger 's book The Catcher in the Rye as inspiration for her work. The New York Times article “The Outsiders: 40 Years Later.” talks about her echoing The Catcher in the Rye along with many other popular writers …show more content…
In her article “What Makes a Book a Classic”, Laura Miller debates how a book is made a classic and questions why some famous works of literature aren’t considered classics yet. She goes through the typical checklist that the College Board has given to help guide in deciding which books warrant classic status and which ones will be relegated to fiction. Presumably until the book’s author dies or someone makes a convincing argument for it to be moved or maybe until the book just drifts there on its own. Miller’s article doesn 't come to a nice conclusion of what literary merit is. For one Miller states at the beginning of her essay that trying to pin down a single definition for literary merit is a, “mostly pointless question, fodder for overcaffeinated undergraduate bull sessions...and other milieus suffering under the delusion that we can arrive at an ironclad consensus of what constitutes literary merit” (Miller). Through her search for what could possibly be used to nail down an “ironclad” definition for literary merit she comes across multiple different answers (Miller). Some say it’s the obvious test of time, others suggest that the book achieves “some form of aesthetic near-perfection”, and yet others say that a classic book is one that moved them (Miller). It seem that there isn’t a single agreeable definition of literary merit or some special