More About Our Worldviews in Literature Homeschool Language Arts Curriculum
This Worldviews in Literature homeschool language arts curriculum examines worldviews and how they manifest themselves in literature. The advanced homeschool high school course is presented to help students better understand the Christian faith and how it relates to the world around them. However, many of the worldviews studied are contrary to, and even hostile toward, a Christian worldview, and these books explore some difficult topics. Parents are encouraged to review this course carefully before sharing it with their students to determine if their students are mature enough and spiritually discerning enough to engage with the material.
Everybody has a worldview. Every author has a worldview. Every literary work embodies a certain attitude toward life; it assumes certain answers to the “big questions” that have always been asked by artists and philosophers: Where have we come from? Where are we going? Does human history have any purpose? Literature, unlike philosophy, is concrete, and appeals to the feelings and senses as well as the mind. One of the best ways to really understand a worldview is to look at a literary embodiment of it.
An overall pattern and historical development is discernible among the worldviews found in western literature. Insight into this helps greatly in understanding both the intellectual history and literature of the West. The six novels (and one poem) read in this homeschool language arts course are: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (Christian theism), “The Universal Prayer” by Alexander Pope (Deism), The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (Naturalism), The Trial by Franz Kafka (Nihilism), The Plague by Albert Camus (Existentialism), Siddhartha by Herman Hesse (Eastern pantheistic monism), and Island by Aldous Huxley (New Age). In addition, homeschool high school students read The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog by James Sire to help unify and focus the worldviews presented in the literature course.
Please be cautioned that these novels (with the exception of the first) portray worldviews that are disturbing. They portray them in ways that disturb. Dr. Hake assumes on the part of the students in this advanced homeschool language arts course a real measure of spiritual maturity in approaching these works. These are all serious, well-written novels by major authors. Homeschool teens may learn much from them as Christians. May God guide them through this study.
