Logically speaking, books can be divided into a thousand genres depending on each person’s preferences , whether that’s murder mysteries, romance novels, or psychological thrillers or high school dramas, but broadly speaking, there are only two concepts that divide all types of books; escapism and existentialism. While the first helps us run from our realities for a while, the other influences us into contemplating broader subjects of our existence and the purpose of our lives.

One such subject is that of melancholy, and the vast emotions that build because of it, that are described and developed in some books, more specifically the books we refer to as “classic literature” that take us into the realm of our inner spirit, where we are able to confront not just the beauty but also the madness, the obsession, and the demons in our soul.

For example, in the story The Black Monk by Anton Chekhov, we see how a man’s obsession with a ‘divine’ purpose in life leads him to see hallucinations of a black monk who advises and talks to him about his identity. His subconscious, in this way, makes him aware of thoughts that he has buried within himself but that he eventually cannot run from. He keeps these hallucinations to himself until one day his wife finds out and tries to cure him and although he accepts her help for a while, later on, it starts making him lose his true identity and he eventually starts lashing out at everyone he cares about because of it. Years later, being drained and full of guilt for both ignoring his subconscious and being angry at his loved ones, he dies.

This deeply obsessive story of moral decay makes us think on our own desires and ambitions and on how far blindly chasing them can take us. Our consciousness is made active by the author’s words in the sense that he compels us into thinking about our dreams, our deepest opinions regarding ourselves and how this opinion affects our behaviour with others. Although everyone would perceive the book differently, the key aspect is that reading such a literary work is enough to make the mind run in circles and not go into someone else’s story, and rather consider the depth of our own life’s motivations.

Mathilda by Mary Shelley is another great melancholic literary work that truly takes the reader into the extreme depths of despair. A little girl’s harsh childhood and then a shocking revelation about her father’s emotions leads to a highly secretive, isolated and suspicious life where a heavy secret about her father and the reason for his death haunts her at every point in her life when she feels even a moment of bliss. She spends most of her life after knowing her father’s secret alone and when someone comes into her life who is kind and could have helped her get through her issues, she pushes him away by choosing to drown in her destined misery instead of accepting his hand for living a good life and helping people.

This story of a deeply sinking heart makes the reader consider their own secrets that they kept buried within themselves during their lifetime and makes them contemplate on the consequences they have paid for them. We have often heard the phrase ‘Some secrets are meant to be taken to the grave’, but this story makes us realise, is the price of these secrets precisely that, our grave into the intense depths of our darkness? It is a subjective theme that the author’s words bring out that many people may perceive differently but it does make the reader think on their own secrets, coping tendencies and behaviours.