Updated: Nov. 20: A previous version of the story that appeared on Oct 23 excluded some information mentioned by literature teacher Scott Catrette. The information has been added.

As high schoolers, all students have been exposed to references from the Bible in each of their literature classes at MVHS. Be it an in-depth study of a certain character and his or her connection to someone in the bible or just a passing comment, students have all talked about the Bible in one lit class or another. But what about those students that are not Christian? Does their lack of exposure to the Bible prevent them from understanding the text? Should MVHS curriculum branch out to include more religions? A student and two literature teachers, all from various backgrounds, explain their perspectives.

An anonymous student, who will be referred to as Caden to preserve his identity, does not believe in a metaphysical god. So when he sees biblical allusions in text, he doesn’t really care about them too much. To him, they are simply parts of the story, like the rest of the text.

“That’s up to you if you want to put other fiction in your fiction, or if you want to put what you believe,” Caden said. “It’s your book, you can put whatever you want, as long as you’re not shoving it down other people’s throats.”

Caden’s atheism is not a barrier in his understanding of the text as he has become familiar with Christianity through atheist blogs and internet research. Although he cannot easily recognize biblical allusions, he is able to understand them after discussions. Although he himself does not look at novels through a biblical lens, Caden recognizes that there are multiple interpretations.

“Different people can interpret text in different ways” Caden said, “but it would be ridiculous if they claimed to find biblical allusions at every page.”

“I like how how an author can use the bible to make the passage or novel multi-faceted,” literature teacher Scott Catrette said.

Catrette explains that Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, along with the Bible are the bedrocks of American literature.

“Allusions are not the messages themselves, they just influence [them],” Catrette said.

Discussion of religious allusions also depends on the degree of importance of the references being made. In texts such as Hamlet and Jane Eyre, readers can miss important nuances if they are unable to recognize the allusions in texts. To prevent this, Catrette provides his students with an introductory lesson on basic aspects of the bible.

However, none of the texts require a thorough understanding of the Bible, and if students want to enhance their understanding of the text by understanding the underlying biblical allusions, they could easily search them up online.

“A religious element in a text just happens to be there,” Catrette said. “[But] as the world becomes multicultural, we will see a rebalancing, so the literary work doesn’t default to the Bible.”

“In high school, I felt like [biblical allusions were] just something that most of my peers being Christian knew about and I didn’t,” literature teacher Monica Jariwala said.

Since Jariwala is not of a Christian background, growing up, she missed many biblical symbols in texts. She sometimes felt as though there was a secret society that she was locked out of.

But, as she started to pursue English in college, things started to change.

“I ended up just learning through discussion,” Jariwala said, “and as the internet became more prominent, I just started to build my background in research.”

Jariwala found that there are ways other than the Bible to get information about Christianity and biblical allusions, such as the internet, books and sometimes simply listening to what people say.