An attempt to reclaim the Classics

For the past couple of months, I have been examining my life before my twenty-fourth birthday this Thursday.  It is quite comical how the events of people I have never known and will never meet can determine an outcome of life such as mine.  I am a result of the "Great Recession" as modern economists and pundits have so dubbed this era of history.  Therefore, I am disengaged and lost according to those who determine the national dialog and direction of Western civilization, but I would like to put them in their rightful place.  Granted, I am not going down the career path I thought I would have chosen, but when economic situations were as dire as they were in 2010, all one can do is take what is given, especially if you are a product of a upper middle class upbringing in the Mid-Atlantic, where conformity is a standard and anything other is considered grotesque and horrid.  So this is what I have come up with as my way to fight back against that pull of American society to be normal: I will read the Classics.

I can understand that some will ponder how reading the Classics, if the concept can even be correctly defined, is fighting against conformity and how does it even relate to the examining of my life.  I believe that answer is simple - average Americans do not actually read anything longer than an article from The New York Times or a post on Facebook.  I will not take away from reading The New York Times, I do it myself daily, but everything is in small, bite sized morsels.  So, I'm going to read the Classics: plays, novels, histories, that are no longer appreciated except by the vain attempt of high school English departments to get students to read them.  As a person who excelled in the public school system of Baltimore County and then went onto The Johns Hopkins University where I majored in History and Politics, I still really have no idea what Ibsen meant in A Doll's House or why Moliere is so popular in French literature courses (another subject I studied intensely, but was never asked to understand why I was taking the time or the effort, except that French was, and let me emphasize was, the language of diplomacy about a two centuries ago).  I want to read the Classics. 

Before I begin reading the Classics, I do need to disclose that I have read a lot.  I had professors and teachers that did inspire me to read and learn subjects vividly and deeply.  My passions were and are always in understanding social trends and popular culture in Early Modern Europe, so reading the Classics were not quite in that field of study.  However,  I know that my professors and teachers read them when they were in college, and I always wanted to understand their references to them.  And that is my point, as a product of the Millennial generation, I have a vague understanding of what modern popular culture is based on and it is surprisingly the Classics.  

The strange path I have attempted to explain in the previous three paragraphs will lay out the point of this blog.  I will read the Classics and attempt to explain them in a way that I can relate to them. An order to the readings may form as a result of my historically focused mind, but I cannot guarantee that.  I will begin this journey by reading none other than Macbeth by William Shakespeare.