As the school year threatens to emerge from its summer hibernation like a homework-dispensing groundhog, students of all ages dread trading in their summer novels of adventure and romance for the supposedly stuffy and stale fare provided by the literature curriculum. However, I’m sure I am not the first to tell you that the classics have stuck around for a reason! The themes ensconced in the pages of these old books still seem to resonate with modern readers, as evidenced by their omnipresence in even the most popular contemporary fiction. If you enjoyed any of the popular novels I list here, perhaps a new appreciation can be found for the classics and the themes and motifs which run through so much of our collective literature. Just click on a cover image to purchase the book from our website!
A Note: I try and avoid discussing the specifics of the plot, but some spoilers are inevitable. Read at your own discretion!
If you liked The Secret History, why not try The Great Gatsby?
Donna Tartt’s intensely psychological debut novel deals with many themes that define F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic work as well. Richard, Tartt’s protagonist, struggles for acceptance and recognition within his elite and cliquish environment, an environment in which appearances are paramount and conceal hideous truths. A similar environment is created in The Great Gatsby, when the facade of decadence and sophistication Gatsby creates in his weekly parties breaks down as the protagonist comes to learn more about him. In both novels, reckless social climbing is rewarded only with knowledge of the potential hollowness of the upper class. Tartt portrays a drunken, bored and intellectually elitist caste who place their own pursuits above human lives. In Fitzgerald, the rich place somewhere in a binary, either tasteless and socially inept or heartless bullies. In both cases, the lifestyle is condemned by the text, driving the characters further into toxic relationships and disregard for those who get in their way. If these themes drew you into the world of The Secret History, The Great Gatsby might entertain you more than you might have expected!
If you liked The Vanished Birds, why not try Moby Dick?
While Simon Jimenez’s millenia spanning space opera might not seem like it would share much with Herman Melville’s seafaring tale of doomed revenge, many of Moby Dick’s core themes have made regular appearances in contemporary science fiction. The limits of human knowledge, which Captain Ahab and the crew of the Pequod must come up against time and time again in their crusade against the white whale, has become a pillar of speculative fiction in general, manifesting in the inscrutable pull of a black hole and the unknowable depths of the ocean alike. The Vanished Birds is no different, and even as the villainous Umbai corporation exploits the power of the boy Ahro, it is ultimately the ineffability of both his strange power and human nature that leads to his freedom.
Nature also features prominently in both novels, as the human characters inevitably try to control, understand, or profit from it. The Umbai corporation’s colonial advances hone entire planets into specialized means of production, unable to support themselves without offworld supplies but unable also to truly take part in interstellar trade. The local flora and fauna are evaluated for profitability, and then produced to the exclusion of all else. In Moby Dick the whaling crew must reckon with nature as both a means of profit as well as an entity to be feared, respected, or hated. If you enjoy reading about a space traveler’s encounter with the unknown and unknowable forces of the universe, Moby Dick might satisfy those same cravings!
If you liked Norwegian Wood, why not try Hamlet?
While stories throughout popular culture emulate Hamlet’s revenge-driven plotline, its thematic influences are even more widespread. Even Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, a story distinctly lacking in regicide and sword fights, resonates with Hamlet’s themes of death and grief. Hamlet is famous for his “to be, or not to be” speech, contemplating the merits of life over death, or death over life. This sentiment is precisely what Toru and the other characters in Norwegian Wood have to confront as they watch those in their lives struggle with or give in to their grief. However, Hamlet and Toru come to somewhat different conclusions stemming from the same consideration. Hamlet muses that taking your own life would be a great relief, were it not for the fear of what comes after. He never comes to a clear answer, and his chaotic behavior underlines his inability to accept death without giving into it. Toru debates the merits of taking his own life as well, in the midst of great tragedy, but ultimately reconciles the forces of life and death within him much more effectively than Hamlet. He is able to continue on with a greater understanding of how death is always a part of life. If these sort of existential considerations drew your attention in Norwegian Wood, Hamlet might offer yet another fascinating perspective!
If you liked The Namesake, why not try Beloved?
As the title might suggest, Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut novel The Namesake deals with the formation of identity, especially through names. These ideas are central to Toni Morrison’s Beloved as well, albeit in a somewhat different context. In The Namesake, the protagonist Gogol struggles with the tension between his traditional Indian family and heritage, and his desire for a life of his own in America. Through changing his name to Nikhil before leaving India for college, he attempts to take control of his own identity. Similarly, many of the characters in Beloved choose new names after being freed from slavery. Characters like Baby Suggs and Stamps Paid seek to define themselves after a lifetime of having definitions forced on them by others. The power of language is harnessed in both instances to enact a separation between the past and the future. That being said, the past has a way of making itself known in the present. In Beloved, the past prevents Sethe, the protagonist, from forming a happy relationship without first being confronted. Baby Suggs’s hazy self-identification results directly from slavery’s impact on her family, keeping her from internalizing her relationships with them. Gogol also chooses confront the past in The Namesake, eventually coming back to try and understand where his first name came from, what drove his father to name him after a Russian author. If identity and the way language shapes it interested you in The Namesake, Toni Morrison’s masterpiece should give you even more to think about!
If you liked The Fifth Season, why not try Animal Farm?
Themes of social striation and oppression run close to the surface of both these novels. Both depict a society of great inequality, and are very concerned with determining just how this inequality came to be. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, various social classes seems to form almost inevitably, as the result of a division between the intellectual leadership and the uneducated laborers. The pigs come to control the language and ideology of the social movement, and can therefore manipulate the other animals to their liking. The pigs take advantage of the other animals’ limited language skills, twisting the phrases originally espoused by the animals’ revolutionary movement in order to trick the animals into enacting their own oppression. This division and abuse of knowledge for the purposes of oppression and personal gain lies at the root of many of the problems inherent in The Fifth Season as well. The characters in N. K. Jemisen’s The Fifth Season are also manipulated from on high, as the ruling class uses fearmongering to enact the oppression of the powerful orogenes while simultaneously indoctrinating the orogenes for their own use. The ruling class knows that the orogenes, if properly trained, are no danger, but spread an ideology which casts the orogenes as evil. The degree to which the ruling classes have influenced perception of the orogenes only becomes more apparent as the trilogy progresses. If you were fascinated by the social commentary present in The Fifth Season, reading Animal Farm might give you even more to consider about the world we live in!
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