The Giver Julius Caesar Analysis

What’s Considered Light? Throughout the essay How to Mark a Book the author, Mortimer J. Adler, brings up the idea and topic of what makes a book worthy of being ‘marked up’ and what he considers to be a light read. He uses examples such as Paradise Lost and Gone with the Wind; The latter being deemed not as worthy. The reason being because it simply does not make you think quite as hard as say, something such as the Bible would. It does not require as much thought and conversation with the author. With that being said, what determines if a book is light? If an easy read of fiction could simply fall into this category, perhaps a book such as The Giver would not require as much thought in comparison to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, therefore not worthy of being marked up. The purpose of this essay will be to determine whether or not
one those two reads are considered more unworthy due to their content and time gap between when they were written. As a start we will begin with The Giver. A semi-recent, dystopian novel by Lois Lowry. Being a fiction book it is fair to assume that while it brings up great examples of what society could hypothetically turn into, Mr. Adler would perhaps at first disregard it as being a ‘light’ read. The Giver can paint a perfect idea of what is going on in the story and would not require much interpretation from the reader to figure it out. Adler writes “An illustration may make the point clear.” (p. 17) so therefore he must assume there is not much to understand from a straightforward read. I do not necessarily agree with this, however. While the book is simple to comprehend, there is much that could be discussed or ‘marked up’ with the author in regards to society and the possibilities of a dystopian one. The other example I will be using is Hamlet, a Shakespearean classic. This read, I believe, would be more of a deserving book to mark up in Adler’s eyes. For years people have been interpreting Shakespearean text, in so many ways. This would have had to be a gold mine in Adler’s mind. As the language used in Shakespeare’s plays are deemed a bit more difficult to comprehend to the common folk, it leaves open numerous of possibilities of what the text could mean. Thus making it easier to ‘talk’ to the author with your thoughts because everyone will have something different that they take from it and it can truly become your own ‘intellectual diary’ of thoughts and ideas that come from the work. As far as how similar these texts could be in relation to whether or not they are able to be marked up, I believe that it is doable for both.
While Hamlet leaves more room for interpretation of the writing on a psychological level (referring to the motives of many of the characters.) and in ways that allows the reader to clarify what they read in their own way, The Giver offers a more relatable conversation that the audience can have with the author due to it being a much easier read and having a more modern setting that we are familiar with. So really, it could go either way. People will have different things they enjoy to analyze. All in all, if Adler had a choice between marking one of those two books, he would more likely go with Hamlet. Enough evidence is shown in the way he writes his essay that The Giver would be too fictional and not be in need of quite as much analysis. I believe he even mentions that Shakespeare, along with several other older works, is one of the books you should tell your friend to buy their own copy to mark up. That being another example to how he values the other genres on a higher intellectual reading
level.