{photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash}
To be “a community that forges character” is part of our mission statement at SLO Classical Academy, and we aim to highlight our SLOCA character traits in some way each month here on the blog. This year we’ve been collecting and sharing lists of books that have themes relating to each month’s character trait. As a book-loving community, we’ve had fun bringing literature into our focus on virtue in this way.
Not that we always find the perfect protagonist who exemplifies the character traits we want to instill. In fact, the opposite is often the case, particularly in classic books. But is that why we read literature? Today we want to share a video blog that provides a little food for thought on the topic of finding virtue in literature. This comes from the Center for Lit – the folks who created Teaching the Classics (the book/method we use for literary analysis here at SLO Classical Academy).
In this short video, Adam Andrews discusses the idea of literary virtue – we think you’ll find it interesting! Among other characters, he refers to Achilles and Hamlet, who are just a couple of the protagonists we will encounter in our readings here at SLOCA. Chew on this a bit, and hopefully it will add to your own conversations with your children when discussing literary characters:
Great literature can certainly inspire character growth, but not always in the way we might think. While we aren’t necessarily trying to extract a moral lesson from everything we read, identifying with the struggles of characters in great books can encourage self-reflection, and help us along in our pursuit of virtue. Happy reading!
