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Comment by paulorlando | Hacker News Reader

I happened to have been assigned Moby Dick in 9th grade English class. Foolishly put off reading it until the night before the book report was due. Got about 1/3 of the way through and went through life thinking it was boring. Fast forward decades, I'm now reading it for real. It hilarious, it's pause encouraging, I love it! (And I'm still only 1/3 through.)

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I had a similar experience with the play "A Raisin in the Sun". Reading it in class, it was boring and difficult to relate to. Watching the play live as an adult, you realize it's actually hilarious and heart-wrenching.

Part of it is growing up, but part of it is (obviously) that plays aren't meant to be read. There's a lot of detail and tone that doesn't really come across properly, and it sucks the life out of the story. Not sure why it's such a common practice in school.

To this day I still think Shakespeare is the most overrated buffoon ever to put words on paper, probably because I was forced to read so much of his work in school.

I realize I'm probably wrong about my assessment, but I've tried to watch performances of his plays as an adult and the outcome is always the same: His words just sound like random noise to my brain. They bounce off.

And yet I love Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian is one of my favorite novels. Go figure.

It is very likely that a book funny to adult you would went over 9th grade you regardless of reading speed.

This is a problem I have yet to see schools tackle. A kid in junior high school has no mental context for the Russian Revolution of 1917, for instance. Having them read Animal Farm is a pointless waste of time.

Poor choice. Animal Farm is way, way more than an allegory of one historical event. It's a broadbrush statement on the kind of people likely to seize power at every opportunity (or if you prefer, the effect unrestrained power has on most people), and a humorous jab at authoritarianism.

The other books mentioned (Gatsby et al.) really require context, but literal pigs sitting down to dinner with powerbrokers is something a 14yo can grasp.

Reading allegory is the way start building mental context.

I read Animal Farm in 9th grade and it had a profound impact me. Hmmm is that you Napoleon?

Same with things like (picking at random) The Great Gatsby and a lot of literature having to do with adult relationships and romance. How on earth is a 16-year-old in 2025 going to understand what's happening in Gatsby? I read it, wrote some papers and got As on them, but didn't really make sense of it at the time.

In addition to being a short classic, I think teens could identify with Gatsby being obsessed with getting the approval of people who have nothing but contempt for him. There's a devastating scene at the end where the narrator, Nick Carraway, organizes a funeral for Gatsby and literally none of his friends show up. I think that might resonate deeply for more than a few teen readers.

The Great Gatsby is an Americanized version of a Greek tragedy, I don't think it's too hard for a 16 year old to understand. It's no "Rabbit, Run", at least.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

That's more a commentary on 2025 than 16 year olds I assure you. In the 90s adult relationships weren't particularly mysterious to your average 16 year old.

…or so the 16-year old still thought.

I mean you leave with whatever take suits you but don't expect buyin for some revisionist narrative that casts 90s era 16 year olds as infantilized incompetents. I'd like to point out that the majority of kids that age at that time had cars, jobs to support said, and relationships of their own of varying levels of "adult"-ness.

I was a 16 year old in the 1990s and it was mysterious to me.

So you were born circa 1979?

Close, you're late by 4 years.

In grade 9 I had to do a book report that compared two books by the same author and I chose Moby Dick and Billy Budd.

My teacher tried to talk me out of it, but I insisted and ultimately she let me do it because Billy Budd is very a short novella.

To this day, Moby Dick is still my second favorite book of all time (with my all time favourite being The Lord of the Rings). I only read it once, 20 years ago, for a book report but it really stuck with me.

I read it maybe 15 years ago and I just remembere it as that book with wale facts.

Slightly tangential but I was discussing high-school English book selection with a relatively new English teacher. He was frustrated that his 9th/10th grade students were uninterested in the books. He was hamstrung in book selection by budget (buying new books wasn't an option) and essentially seniority (he couldn't select any books that were read in more advanced classes even though few of his students will take those classes). So the system was unintentionally teaching most kids that reading books was boring.

Honestly, even getting through 1/3 of it in a night is pretty impressive. Certainly took me several weeks freshman year of college.

I read it a few years ago and was severely disappointed. All these comments about Moby Dick makes me reconsider giving it a second go.

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