Romeo and Juliet (1595) by William Shakespeare

Romeo climbs Juliet's balcony in the play's iconic scene

I do have some recollection of reading the famous play Romeo and Juliet in high school, as most Americans do. We even took a field trip to see it performed live. However, like most students of teen age, I paid the great work little respect and thus recall almost none of my previous read, nor the experience of seeing the play itself, and thus was able to experience it again with fresher eyes.

I've always viewed Shakespeare's work as being rather stuffy and impenetrable. Probably this is due to the early modern English language in which his plays are written. Thankfully, I thoroughly destroyed this barrier in the past with a complete reading of the King James Version of the Holy Bible. No work of early modern English will ever intimidate me after completing such a slog as that, and I was able to experience Romeo and Juliet in a far more natural manner than I was probably ever able to while studying it in school.

Shakespeare's actually quite different from my previous view of him. The early pages of Romeo and Juliet left me staggered not from his poetic, creative, beautiful dialogue (although it does feature plenty of that), but with the experience of reading Romeo and Mercutio's sharp, barb-like dialogue between one another and pausing, dumbstruck, with the thought of: "Hold on a second... Was that a dick joke? In Shakespeare!?"

If love be rough with you, be rough with love;

Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.

Yes, yes it was. It was a dick joke. There are plenty of vagina jokes, too!

Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry 

Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.

Surprisingly (at least to me—a Shakespearean neophyte), various clever, bawdy references are peppered throughout.

Reading such dialogue is amusing, mostly due to my previous notion that Shakespeare's work was utterly proper and academic, but also due to the everlasting notion that the generations before ours were always somehow better than us; more polite, more proper, more civilized. And it's nice to be reminded so often while reading literature that that's certainly not the case. That it never was. That even highly educated nobility, decked out in their expensive, colorful livery, were still shamelessly making dick jokes with their pals as they drank at a party.

And so I learned that Romeo and Juliet often reads as a modern romantic comedy. The first half of the play is strikingly casual, entertaining, and humorous. I swept through its pages with relative ease compared to how challenging I used to find his work—I attempted to read Macbeth several years ago and failed inside the first dozen pages. I can only imagine that Shakespeare's contemporaries would have greatly enjoyed such levity.

This kind of light, comic romance would be fully disarming to one who was not already aware of the play's conclusion. My reading of the play undoubtedly suffered at the spoiling of this reveal, as I expect most readers' must be. With hindsight, I came to admire the deftness with which Shakespeare sets up the tragic ending. The play's paciness also helps this along, as it moves quickly from scene to scene and wastes little time with unnecessary diversion.



As I read, I grew to respect Shakespeare not as some high-minded artist, but rather as an exceptional entertainer. Of course, some of this is lost on us modern day readers, as there's a bit of a time barrier. But I still enjoyed Romeo and Juliet far more than I expected to. If I had to level a criticism at the play, it would probably fall more on the medium with which I experienced it rather than any of the text itself. Reading a play in written form is always going to fall short of the full experience of seeing it live, and I found myself craving some exposition to help illustrate the scene for me; something which I would not have felt had I been witnessing the stage production rather than reading it.

Regardless; a worthwhile experience. And I look forward to reading more Shakespeare soon.

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The Little Mermaid (1836) by Hans Christian Andersen

During certain difficult periods of my youth I've fallen prey to cursing myself and wishing to be anyone other than who I am. I'd guess that these sorts of moments of self-doubt and alienation are rather common among young adults. It wasn't until my late twenties that I began to set aside this brand of deep, subtle, festering self-hatred and instead choose to focus first on learning who exactly it is that I'm hating, then working to accept the person I am, and finally striving to improve the qualities I've already unknowingly developed, and then to correct some of my most unfortunate deficiencies. I think it's an important part of adulthood to finally come to terms with who you are and begin, from there, to learn and work to become who you really want to be.

The Little Mermaid's tragic fable touches on the theme of identity and desire, centered around a young girl who's given the opportunity to become somebody she is not in order to please what she believes are the desires of another. She realizes the heartbreaking gravity of such a tragic error, along with the fickle nature of desire.

Andersen's evocative scene-setting is perhaps what he does best, and it remains strong throughout this short story. Colorful descriptions of seashell-speckled aquatic palaces, the wriggling dark tentacles littering the walls of the sea witch's abode. Even the settings on dry land are especially spellbinding: limestone castles and fantastical beaches. These kinds of establishing shots read through in casual exposition are what I loved so much about Thumbelina, and it remains strong throughout The Little Mermaid.

The book is permeated with some Christian subtext that feels a bit jarring and out of place in the story, and I think it would have worked better had the titular mermaid been focused not on being granted an immortal soul, but simply the prince's love. I found the conclusion to be wanting as well, as we see Andersen devolve into a rather... psychedelic experience in the closing pages. It might have been compelling had it not been so abruptly and carelessly introduced, but I felt that it shifted the somber tone of the conclusion too quickly. I'd have much preferred for Andersen to instead have ended things on a simpler, more tragic note.

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Of Mice and Men (1937) by John Steinbeck

Everyone who reads classic literature as an adult has picked up a book they were forced to read as a teenager and had a completely different experience the second time around. I had just this experience with Of Mice and Men, and I've had it before with certain other books that are part of the typical American educational curriculum—my recent re-read of The Great Gatsby provided a similar experience.

I'm not an educator, nor am I particularly well-versed in raising children. But I still can't help but criticize the choice to make this book such a cornerstone of teenage literary education because there seems to be so little for children and teenagers to relate to within its pages. The gentle giant trope could be one, sure. But what felt most poignant for me was Steinbeck's clear reference to the American dream, and his constant depiction of how hopeless the lives and futures of these men (and the woman) are.

American adults are constantly enraptured by the future. We're thinking about retirement, house maintenance, debt management. Marriage, children. We're thinking about our five-year-plan, or relocating to a more affordable or more luxurious area. We're considering career changes. I'd go as far as to say this kind of thinking is a universal aspect of daily American life. And these characters are no different in this regard. They dream big, but they're their own worst enemies. They constantly plan to grow a stake of money with which to buy land, but they end up blowing it on whoring and gambling, or being struck by misfortune, and their best-laid plans (of mice and men OHHH, HE SAID IT! HE SAID THE TITLE!) going awry. This is something intensely, viscerally understood and feared by adults, and a thought I believe is probably hopelessly lost on children and teenagers who've never had to provide for themselves and who've never been dominated by their dreams for—and worries about—the future. It's why I believe I garnered nothing from Of Mice and Men when I first read it as a 13-year-old, but the story ended up resonating so strongly with me as a 35-year-old.

We're constantly confronted with the other face of these characters' dreams; their doubts and learned cynicism. Candy—the elderly, maimed white man who's forced to allow his dog to be euthanized—is a figure who has almost nothing left to hope for, but still allows himself to believe in the dream of owning and working his own land. Crooks, the beaten-down black man, even taps into this hope briefly, before being cruelly cowed once again by Curley's wife in a blunt exhibit of the racial power hierarchy that was excruciating to read. These characters are facing lives and tribulations far more extreme than yours truly, and probably more severe than most of the folks with access to the internet reading this write-up. But modern readers are still readily able to relate to them. We've all sat at our desk at work, dreaming about quitting our job and picking up and moving to Europe, or thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, or volunteering in Antarctica—only to be swiftly removed of this possibility once our student loan payments and credit card bills come due later in the month.

John Steinbeck

The story carries on in this manner nearly throughout; relatable and all the more poignant and tragic for it. Candy's dog and a character at the end of the story fail in their tasks and are euthanized, no longer able to provide for themselves and dealt with in a manner meant to end further suffering. George is tragically forced to destroy the symbol and the constant reminder of the existence of all of his hopes and dreams. The characters who experience frustration when denied the means to reach their dreams often lash out at one-another in helplessness; Curley's wife is unnecessarily cruel to Crooks, as Crooks was unnecessarily cruel to Lenny beforehand. Curley is frustrated with his existence and finds life unfulfilling and lashes out at anyone unlucky enough to be near him. These people damage each other constantly and their frustrations lead to in-fighting when cooperation makes so much more sense, but they simply can't help venting their dissatisfaction. Their cyclical lives continue on like Ouroboros, perpetuating their misery, still retaining a grain of hope but ultimately being discarded once their usefulness is gone. Crooks and Candy themselves both rally against this inevitable obsolescence—Candy is aged and maimed but insists on his ability to work, Crooks' body is failing him but he stubbornly continues to cling to what little he has. The book asks us what these people have to live for. They'll never escape these circumstances, but hope is nevertheless present, inextinguishable. 

It's an excellent, tight novella and there are few wasted pages. Steinbeck succeeds in depicting contemporary slang in a manner far better than some of his peers alongside whom he stands in the pantheon of American literature. Perhaps the only bone I have to pick with the story is the jarring, out-of-character visions Lenny seems to have in the closing pages. I found them so irrational and unnatural as to wonder how they made it into the text without being edited out. Lennie is not a person who's capable even of moment-to-moment problem-solving or planning; how is he suddenly able to roleplay a conversation with George, or his long-dead Aunt? It felt a bit too melodramatic and indulgent to me, and I think the conclusion of the book plays out far better without its inclusion.

Regardless, this is a book well-worth reading. It says a lot about American life even today, and it says a lot about the human condition: How unceasingly we dare to dream, how frustrating life can be when those dreams are dashed, and how we're all-too-ready to take that frustration out on each other when our hopes turn to ash and we're forced back to the drawing board. Contrary to the tragic arc of this book, it actually left me hopeful—hopeful for the future, and inspired not to give up on my grand plans and dreams, most of which will likely never come to fruition but remain important nonetheless.

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