What We’re Reading

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations. Dickens is the Victorian-era author. His works are now the stuff of cultural legend and treasure, with numerous works having been made for television or film – including Great Expectations. In teaching Great Expectations, one is tasked with considering the themes they want their students to focus on while reading. Here is an opportunity to briefly discuss the joy and depth of reading Dickens’ tale of Pip’s maturation, fall, and redemption within his own self-confessed story. Dickens is doing multiple things simultaneously, including: social class criticism in pitting a generally more noble and virtuous working-class against the monstrous ambitions of the upper-class (although this is not necessarily black and white as there are some good aristocrats and there are some haughty and awful lower-class people in his work); reflecting on the possibility (or impossibility) of love in the modern world; and the essential importance of kindness and forgiveness in a world in transformation. Despite the admittedly ambiguous ending (perhaps it is best that the reader may determine the fates of Pip and Estella), Pip does recover his original humanity by embracing the compassion, kindness, and forgiveness of his former self and those better angels who surrounded him throughout the story: Joe Gargery and Herbert Pocket. The greatest expectation we can grow into is living a life of kindness and forgiveness. That is open to all, regardless of age, sex, education, and social status.

~ Paul Krause

T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral. “Since golden October declined into sombre November / And the apples were gathered and stored, and the land / became brown sharp points of death in a waste of water and mud, / The New Year waits, breathes, waits, whispers in darkness.” Murder in the Cathedral is an excellent piece to read as summer wanes into fall. Eliot articulates such details of autumnal characteristics that it seems to distract from the essence of the play, which is Saint Thomas Becket’s assassination. The play is a perfect reminder of the coming months and the holiday season. Murder in the Cathedral forces readers to hold fast to the present by watching the leaves fall, witnessing frost on window seals, and lighting candles to create a somber mood. Eliot encourages us to take heed of these small details and never take them for granted.

~ Sarah Tillard

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