Good Literature Essay

1083 Words5 Pages
What is good literature? Is it a matter of opinion? Yes, it is a matter of opinion, but to me, good literature is a work of art that comes to life. Good literature tells a story while creating a memory for the reader. This aspect makes the person reading the book have a flashback of the story every once in a while but remember it as a real life moment instead of just another book. Also, for a book to qualify as good literature, it must connect to another work such as a movie or a book so that the reader does not seem lost in a different world. The last qualification of good literature in my definition has a strong reliance on a books flow. I personally do not want to read a book that throws you into what feels like the middle of an adventure, instead, I want to feel like I was along for the entire journey and I have a role in it. By this definition, both books, The Red Badge of Courage, by Steven Crane, and Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, fall into the category of good literature. Have you ever had a memory and you can’t remember where or when that happened and then you realize it was something you read in a book? If this has happened to you, the book you’re thinking of most likely made you feel really consumed by it and therefore it was probably a work of good literature. While reading The Badge of Courage by Steven Crane, I thought several times that I would have this type of memory of an event that I was reading about. For example, when I read, “’Here they come! Here they come!’ Gun locks clicked. Across the smoke-infested field cam a brown swarm of running men who were giving shrill yells. They came on, stooping and swinging their rifles at all angles. A flag, titled forward, sped near the front.”(Crane 31) I thought about how this will change my prospective of war in the future and give me a more personal experience of battles. This reading also
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