Literature, Moral Development in

Many high school students wonder why English has to be such a large part of their curriculum. They think that at first glance it does not offer any concrete tools for the future, but, in reality, an understanding of literature is essential in developing the self, and many of the texts taught at the high school level are taught to enrich the student's understanding of how moral struggles are met by characters in a variety of situations. In a way, in secular education these works of literature stand in for sacred texts. They provide a base of narratives from which to draw inspiration, ideas, and moral standards; furthermore, they often address spiritual concerns head on. The universality of the texts' themes explains why these texts are taught in a wide range of high schools public and private, religious and secular.

Throughout the canon of English literature taught at the high school level, issues of morality, moral crisis, and moral identity are frequently addressed in profound ways. Many of the texts in the classic canon (the texts chosen as appropriate and necessary for general literary education) are chosen because they demonstrate the path to an independent moral understanding often through crisis, death, and hardship. From the very beginnings of the English literary tradition to contemporary literature, this pattern still defines what is included in the canon of acceptable texts for high school students.

Shakespeare's play Hamlet, for instance, shows the transformation of a privileged prince into a grieving figure questioning his own moral identity through the moral struggle of death. Wavering through various philosophical options and reactions, the title character, Hamlet, is swallowed up in his own search for revenge and autonomy. Although his end is tragic, Hamlet manages to gain both revenge against his uncle, the murderer of his father, and an understanding of how destructive this revenge truly is. Thus, the reader is left to undergo the moral transformation that the play's title character cannot. The questions of revenge, mortality, and the struggle for self-identity that dominate the play are exactly what makes it so appealing for the high school classroom.

The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, although a complicated example, are frequently used to show one's struggle to understand death through a Christian lens. Holy Sonnet X and Holy Sonnet XIV are the most frequently read because they deal directly, and in sophisticated ways, with the human struggle with death and salvation. In both of these texts, the poet presents a paradox, the most sophisticated of literary tropes, to make their complex moral point. In Holy Sonnet X (Death be not proud…), the poet meditates on the idea that death itself will die so that all shall live, and in Holy Sonnet XIV (Batter my heart …), the poet claims that he must be enslaved and enthralled by God in order to be set free. The complexity of this moral journey and [Page 267]the sophistication of how it is explained make it a prime example of the moral journey and development of a moral compass as being a necessity for acceptance into the literary canon of high school texts.

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