Wow. All I am able to say while looking back to the start of my long journey with literary merit, is wow. The time, changes, tools, characters, plots, and dedication that has been poured into my final definition is one lengthy list. The journey has been long and has not been easy, allow me to now reflect by going all the way back to my roots with my very first definition of literary merit. 

Originally, before reading anything at all that contained literary merit, I thought of it as a very simple concept. To me, literary merit was simply just a book that a reader finds to be somewhat like a work of art. At first, I had to break it up, by combining the several aspects of literature, with the definition of merit, which I know is something that has worth. So, when I combined the two, a piece of literature that contains value was discovered, and that is all she wrote. That is literally all that I knew pertaining to literary merit. I was curious of course about what aspects contributed to the literature’s merit, but as for my original definition, it was short and simple, containing no complexities at all. While this was technically my first definition, I more so consider it my “brainstorming” era. It was before I had anything to go off of and was actually just a few thoughts I, somehow, tied together in my head. I like to consider my actual first definition to be the one I came up with after reading Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome. Now, reading this did not influence my initial thoughts heavily, as it was easily not my favorite read, and therefore left more desire for my criticism rather than my attraction, but, I was able to determine a few components to look for when searching for literary merit. After this read, I determined that literary merit should have very intellectual takes on many aspects that go into having literary merit, such as theme, character development, and the after effect it leaves on a reader. Referring  to themes, Wharton offered many advanced ideas such as the theme of isolation, sacrifice, and social restrictions.  I also noticed Wharton’s writing style. It was very professional, it didn’t contain any slang, and used very good grammar. She used many symbols, and other literature tools that required readers to actually think about what they were reading. One of the symbols she had used was the pickledish. Which actually represented Zeena and Ethan’s broken marriage, but until I was truly thinking about how Ethan tried to mend the dish back together, I would have never viewed it to be a symbol, and just little things like that, which required me to actually think. All of these items contribute to Ethan Frome having literary merit, which pushed me towards the idea of literary merit also needing to contain complex themes and literary devices that provoke thought within the reader.

After a great amount of thinking, and an even greater amount of critiquing, I have finally come to an overall conclusion to my definition of literary merit. However, you should receive a fair warning that it has become rather lengthy. To define literary merit, I consider it to be a work of literature that contains complex themes that are overall conveyable to the reader, it should have a long lasting impact that provokes thought and question in the readers minds, the wordplay should be careful and descriptive, so that readers feel that they are on an adventure with the characters of the story, and the characters should go through different levels of development throughout the story, this will make the audience/readers feel engaged with the story at hand. These classic works of literature should teach readers something that they did not already know, perhaps about history or the world around them. Most importantly, it should emphasize the reader’s view of the world around them, and the world before them, all while bettering the world after them. Now trust me, I know that was a lot of new information considering the fact that in the last paragraph my definition was practically two words, and trust me, I genuinely am sorry, but you simply do not understand. After reading so many pieces of literature that contain literary merit this year, it is surprising that I was able to create one that short. You see, after each read, my definition was stretched and remolded with a complete new checklist of leading contributors to the term. It is with very careful cutting and trimming that I am able to finally offer you that definition.

  Now, I would love to compare my original and final definitions, and explain to you just how I arrived at the position in which I now comfortably sit.

 The most obvious difference is that one is complex and one is not. What I mean by that is, my original definition paid close attention only to theme, wordplay, and careful use of literary tools. Now, besides the theme, none of the things I just listed are exactly complex, and certainly any piece of literature can contain careful wordplay and a few symbols. So, even though I had not noticed at the time, nothing about this definition truly separated literature that contains literary merit away from any other piece of literature that contains close to nothing. One piece of literature that built the foundation for my current understanding of literary merit was The Poisonwood Bible by Barabara Kingsolver.  Reading The Poisonwood Bible, I realized it had literary merit for multiple reasons. Two things that really stuck out to me the most, were the independent and well developed characters and their voices, which each brought on some sort of complexity, and also the themes which also brought on complexity, especially the ones that explored religion. By reading the book, I have learned a good deal about how literary merit should be complex. The Poisonwood Bible is actually a perfect example of how books need to carry complexity in order to succeed in having literary merit. I learned this through learning about each individual character and what problems or challenges they took on, as each one handled it differently, this also contributed to the multiple complex themes, which all truly required me to think. I had to analyze the book in my head as I read it. Therefore, The Poisonwood Bible taught me that books should not just be words on a page, or easy to understand, but that in order to have literary merit, it should make readers stop and think about things. This affected my definition of literary merit because, originally, I just thought of literary merit as any old book that carried literary value. So, this read obviously made me rethink literary merit entirely. The read that sparked the most altering changes from my original definition of literary merit was To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. To Kill A Mockingbird has a very well constructed writing technique, considering the story is told through the eyes of a young girl, Scout Finch. The writing style makes her thoughts and how she views the world have an incredibly natural flow that is easy to understand. This writing style also allows readers to develop with Scout as she turns from an innocent child, to someone who knows the cold dark truth of the world. Throughout the book, multiple themes are introduced as well. Some of these are racial injustice, loss of innocence, power of empathy, and the importance of courage to stand up for what you believe in. Each of these themes offer their own unique sense of complexity. Even though some of  these were things I had touched on in my current definition of literary merit, reading TKAM really helped me to pick out the minor details of literary merit that make a huge impact on the work as a whole. So, the concluding thought from my comparison of my original and final definitions, is that my original lacked complexity of any sort, and contained aspects easily achievable to any piece of literature. Reading novels like The Poisonwood Bible and To Kill A Mockingbird helped correct my definition, and give me a better understanding of literary merit as a whole. In terms of the timeline of my definition, as I earlier mentioned, it changed after each read. Specifically the two that I have already provided analysis on influenced it the most, because other reads more so just influenced the opinions I had already stated.

The journey of completing my final project for literary merit was similar to my journey with literary merit in that it was not simple. My definition had grown so long, and there were so many points to be covered. I literally did not understand how I was expected to cover it all. I tried to do an online storybook, but quickly realized that I did not have the creativity to do an entire story. I tried a poem, but it did not sound even the slightest bit poetic. I even resorted to a basic infographic, but I failed to make it aesthetically pleasing, and if you’re gonna nail someone with information, it should at least be cute. The day of presentations was approaching, and my stress levels were rising. When I took my brother to Dollar General to buy a poster for his science project, I saw a beautiful glitter poster, and of course, I impulsively bought it. So, now I knew that whatever I decided to do would be on a poster. That same day, I was scrolling through my Pinterest, and a poster popped up that someone had completed based on one of their favorite novels, they had each letter of the alphabet, and under each letter they included a reason, beginning with that letter, that this novel was their favorite. My imagination burned. I thought that the alphabet would be perfect. 26 reasons and examples for my very long definition of literary merit. As I sat down to work on my poster, I quickly realized that my cute poster would not be an option due to the lack of room for the entire alphabet. This was the largest problem that I faced, and it was easy to conquer. I simply just altered to Google Slides, which was better all around because I could include pictures and more evidence. I then dedicated each letter to a piece of my definition, and backed it up with two examples/pieces of evidence. This was surprisingly the easy part, seeing as we read so much this year. My most important takeaway from this project was the importance of the ability to recognize literature that contains literary merit, and  simply just good literature. I now understand the complexity that goes into literature that contains literary merit compared to literature that does not. Being able to recognize this difference has no doubt strengthened me as a student.

Link to my project (click here)