The Most Interesting Thing

The most interesting thing that I have learned over the course of my High School career was in English class junior year. Junior year I took Ap English Literature. For this course, we had three summer reading books; Heart of Darkness,Grapes of Wrath, and The Invisible Man. I read the Invisible Man and utterly despised the book. In my opinion, it was nothing more than an awful story about an African American man who constantly complained about how the world was against him. I had never before read a book where I disliked the main character so much. When Mrs. Oles asked us what we thought of the book, I said, "It was nothing more than a black man complaining about how hard life was but not doing anything about it." I did not understand what the point was. After I said this, Mrs. Oles looked at me and said, "Seamus think about what you just said. Perhaps that was the point." All of a sudden, it clicked and I realized that it actually was a masterful book. The main character didn't fix his life because he couldn't. The author told this story to demonstrate the fact that for an African American man in the 1930's, it was impossible to improve your life. He was stuck in this awful cycle. From that day forward, I have learned to always think about what the author may be trying to demonstrate with a book, especially when I dislike the story because you never know, you may just learn something.