The thesis of Why read the classics is the statement that you can never fully enjoy a classic until you are fully an adult. Calvino doesn't believe that young people can truly understand a classic. The thesis is found at several points in the essay such as: "..it does not apply to the young, since they are at an age when their contact with the world, and with the classics which are part of that world, is important percisely because it is their first such contact. " (Calvino, Page 1) , "..whereas at a mature age one appriciates (or should appriciate) many more details, levels and meanings. "(Calvino, Page 4) and "..the reading we do when we are young can often be of little value because we are impatient, cannot concentrate, lack expertise in how to read, or because we lack experience in life." ( Calvino, Page 4) These examples of the thesis are just a few that I quickly picked out. The thesis of this essay is explicit because Calvino makes it very obvious with the way the essay is set up with the 14 different defintions of what a classic really is . He states many times that classics are only truly understood when you read or reread them at an age of full maturity.
Calvino, Italo. Why Read the Classics? New York: Vintage, 2000. Print.
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