Francine Prose’s, I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read, proves many points about literature and the effect it has on students. I agree with Prose in such a sense that I believe students should read literature, not to get a better understanding of the “behind-the-scenes” of the story, or because it was assigned to them, but because they want to read it and that they will actually read the story thoroughly, understand it, and apply it to themselves and their life.
I have taken English classes where the literature is taught effectively, in a annotative sense, and we have learned what to look for in a novel, story, or other piece of literature, to determine the position of point of view the author has on a certain topic. We studied the author and the history of the context more than the context itself.…