knowyourmeme

In Young Adult Lit this week, we did a meme activity with the book Fault in Our Star.  We each had to creat 3 memes created by 3 different characters or recieved by 3 different characters.  Although the content of the book resulted in the production of some slightly offensive and really offensive memes, the idea of using memes as a way to capture the personality of a character or the theme of a story is fantastic.  I would definitely use use memes as a way to help students relate to classic literature.  If they can put it into modern terms, they will be able to interpret the literature better.  This goes a long perfectly with our discussion of graphic novels since memes are also a graphic representation of an idea with minimal text.  Each meme has a preconcieved idea of its meaning.  Philsoraptor is philosophical although sometimes petty and shallow, the woman crying and holding her head is "first world problems," . Fry  from futurama is "not sure if" and the year book picture of the boy with braces is "bad luck brian" who usually experiences something ironic such as "takes driving test, gets first DUI." 

Although memes typically comment on current events or sensitive issues that people take too seriously, I think they would be great for literature as well.  I found some excellent Shakespeare (hipster shakespeare) and Charles Dickens memes. Those memes aren't particularly literary, but definitely amusing.   If students had to create a graphical and textual representation of a character or situation, then I think they would begin to see a lot more character development and relatable topic in classic literature.