ABSTRACT
What is the point of suffering? Does life have meaning and purpose? What does it mean to live a “good” life? Philosophers and writers have long asked existential questions of this sort, but so, too, do many young people (Appleyard, 1990). Indeed, in the more than twenty years that I have spent reading and talking about literature with students in high school and college English classes, I have found that when they are challenged to examine ontological questions of the sort that interest philosophers, their intellectual curiosity is piqued, they are more involved in class proceedings, and they are willing to think more deeply and critically about literary texts they read.
