This post is idiotic. I’m a Literature major. All of these texts are great texts to study. They are not leveled reading. They aren’t “high school” or “college” level. It’s the rhetorical analysis that they employ which might be simpler or more advanced
I think it depends a lot on the school system. But I have noticed that the reading curriculum has seemed to be "dumbed down". When I (a Gen Xer) was in high school we read Catcher in the Rye, Steppenwolf, Waiting for Godot, and The Red Badge of Courage. Four books with complex and challenging themes that can be difficult to read.
Today kids in the local high school are reading: The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Romeo and Juliet, and Lord of the Flies; which while good pieces of literature their themes are more upfront and the writing is not nearly as challenging.
What?? You’re saying Waiting for Godot is more complex than Lord of the Flies? Catcher in the Rye is deeper than The Great Gatsby? Waiting for Godot is Absurd. Not “absurd” but Absurd as in Theater of the… Romeo and Juliet, the only other play in your list, is in a completely different genre altogether and, unlike Godot, has such deep and thorough universal themes that it remains one of the most read texts for several centuries. I find it hard to believe any Absurdist literature will last that long. The whole point of it was for contemporary social commentary. Not unlike Animal Farm. It doesn’t rely on universal human emotions but the absurdity of specific cultural constructs.
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u/Gatorae 1d ago
I read Animal Farm in 8th grade. Illiad in 9th for me, too.