Great Expectations

Today is the last day of school before Christmas vacation. And boy, have my kids earned time off, especially Son 2. He started high school this year and in his Honors English class they’ve been reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Parents were encouraged to read along with them, as the teacher acknowledged it was a challenging book for kids of this age.

Uh, yeah.

It was challenging for me, and I was an English major in college, I’ve read other works by Dickens, including A Tale of Two Cities, and I’m a very good reader. Not only does Great Expectations have a long cast of characters, but more than one character is not well-educated and speaks in a sort of dialect. For example, right away a man is demanding “wittles,” his pronunciation of “vittles.” And that’s one of the easier to decipher.

Don’t get me started on how the testing for this book was conducted in their class. Suffice to say that these kids who had tested into the honors track came out of the first exam with mostly Ds and Fs. But they kept on reading and kept on testing and I kept on encouraging. There were times Son 2 would read aloud a passage and ask me what it meant and I had absolutely no idea. Even when I went back to it in context, I couldn’t be entirely sure. And so I grumbled (silently) to myself about this literature choice while aloud I just told him to keep on keeping on.

And then it came to the last 100 pages. “It’s getting good now,” my student said. By this time, the cast of characters were familiar, the mysteries were being solved one by one, and there was a sense of impending threat. Pip’s life was almost taken, it looked as if the girl was gone for good, and on behalf of his “benefactor” there was an exciting attempt at escape on the Thames River.

When Son 2 turned the last page, he looked up. “I think that’s the best book I’ve ever read.”

Wow.

I still think it’s a lot to bite off for freshmen. And perhaps there are some better ways to ease them into the story. But to Mr. Charles Dickens…my hat is off. Dude, you’re still relevant.

Do you have a book you thought you wouldn’t enjoy, but then ended up loving? It doesn’t have to be a classic!