My definition of literary merit was initially how the literary community perceives a book. By the end of my journey, my definition had morphed into: literary merit is based on how a work discusses and examines a social problem or topic, its ability to leave a lasting impact on both its readers and the literary world as a whole, and its ability to portray complex relationships with its characters. The first definition is really just a guess based on a couple things I knew about literary merit, mainly that they won a lot of awards. So I thought that since they won a lot of awards that meant it had to be a judgment type thing. My final definition is really more of a three point thesis on literary merit. Instead of an educated guess like the first one, this is the results of my findings from analyzing and discussing all of the works we read throughout the year.
Like I said, my final definition of literary merit is more like a three point thesis. The final definition was that literary merit is based on how a work discusses and examines a social problem or topic, its ability to leave a lasting impact on both its readers and the literary world as a whole, and its ability to portray complex relationships with its characters. Reading and analyzing The Poisonwood Bible and Ragtime inspired me to include how well a work discusses and examines a social problem or topic in its story as one of my qualities of Merit. Much Ado About Nothing and A Doll’s House made me think to add a quality about a work’s ability to leave a lasting impact on both its readers and the literary world as a whole in my definition. Ethan Frome and The Road both were books that forced me to add a third quality relating to a work’s ability to portray complex relationships with its characters.
When I started this project I decided to write an essay. Though admittedly, I will say it kind of turned more into an essay, but I would still call it a speech. I decided to basically narrate how my definition of literary merit started at the beginning of this year, then talk about each work we looked at, and how that affected my ongoing definition of literary merit, plus any commentary I felt I needed to add on each work. The greatest challenge I faced during this project was actually coming up with what I wanted to do and if I was doing the right thing. I’m very used to being given set options on what to do in class and then being able to consult my teacher on if I’m following what they had in mind for the template that I chose. Not having either to lean on gave me serious pause. The way I overcame this was by just sitting down and analyzing what I’m best at. I identified that I’m good at public speaking so a speech would be best for me.
The biggest takeaway I got from this project was that I need to work on being able to direct myself in class without any reassurance. When I started to analyze myself with that thought in mind, I realized that I’ve always had this problem. I’ve always been one to get up and double check instructions when I really didn’t need to. This is definitely a habit I need to break before college.