I see it a lot in my students that the ONLY mode they can engage with literature on is one in which they either say it’s good because it’s “relatable” or it’s bad because they “can’t relate to it” as well, and I feel like this is a symptom of the same problem. An unwillingness to engage with fiction outside of its ability to be a mirror to your specific worldview and set of morals. But art doesn’t exist to give you moral purity badges–it’s a mode of expression that produces conversations between artists and readers. And to engage in those converesations on an adult level you need to learn to process the discomfort of flawed human realities productively.
ALT
