What you do in life, good, bad, otherwise, comes back to haunt you. And the suicide of Robert X is an embodiment of that lesson.
In reading about this book, in preparation for this essay, I came across a conversation the author had with John Lowe concerning the tight narrative quality of the book, and I think in commenting about it, Gaines underscores one of the book's major themes:
WP: There's nothing wasted in that book. It's totally honest and almost foreordained from the beginning, from the first page.
Gaines: A great man falls, and what he's going to do when he gets up. He feels that even God had failed him. He could not even please God any more (Lowe 184).
This theme, or question rather, of how does one deal with failure is an important one, on the individual level as well as on the group level. How does one deal with personal failure? How does a team, a group, deal with failure? Does one take the easy way out (i.e. suicide)? Does the group give up its collective goal? These questions are integral to the process of self-examination, and that's what Gaines is asking the reader to consider (among other things, racial tensions, civil rights, the power of God, etc.)
So in briefly looking at these two literary works, one can see how they impact readers individually and as a collective.
With that said, I'd now like to discuss how reading literature specifically aligns with the rubrics set forth by universities and colleges. In short, what do colleges want their students to achieve by reading literature? Well, I am of the opinion that academia, in particular those factions who push for a "liberal arts" education, want students to be exposed to different voices, different styles of expression, different cultures, and one successful way to do this is via literature. For example, I've never murdered an old pawnbroker and her halfwit sister, but after reading "Crime and Punishment" I can probably tell one what it was like...
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