Personally I don't believe how most people nowadays try to teach people Lit, but there are definitely distinctions between lower and higher lit, and you can't just treat it like a pill and expect instant synchronization with the message.
For example, look at the poem below by Robinson Jeffers which - with powerful images and rhythm - describes man in a misanthropic manner and provides no 'answers' in the definite sense. Some people reading this will feel despair. Others will start becoming environmentalists. Some wackos might turn into the next Unabomber. And some might see the last lines as a creed to stand by and set forth into the human race with renewed vigor to bear suffering. Yet, none of those things matter - because the poem is still descriptive of some part of the human condition and does so beautifully - even though the world is, at large, not necessarily built like this. It shows you this part as an object that you can respond to, but does not dictate your reaction to the object. It also provides enough narrative twists to not be definite.
Such things cannot be given, which, in a way, makes them useless even though they stake out one side of humanity - but they can only be recognized.
ORIGINAL SIN
The man-brained and man-handed ground-ape, physically
The most repulsive of all hot-blooded animals
Up to that time of the world: they had dug a pitfall
And caught a mammoth, but how could their sticks and stones
Reach the life in that hide? They danced around the pit, shrieking
With ape excitement, flinging sharp flints in vain, and the stench of their bodies
Stained the white air of dawn; but presently one of them
Remembered the yellow dancer, wood-eating fire
That guards the cave-mouth: he ran and fetched him, and others
Gathered sticks at the wood’s edge; they made a blaze
And pushed it into the pit, and they fed it high, around the mired sides
Of their huge prey. They watched the long hairy trunk
Waver over the stifle trumpeting pain,
And they were happy.
Meanwhile the intense color and nobility of sunrise,
Rose and gold and amber, flowed up the sky. Wet rocks were shining, a little wind
Stirred the leaves of the forest and the marsh flag-flowers; the soft valley between the low hills
Became as beautiful as the sky; while in its midst, hour after hour, the happy hunters
Roasted their living meat slowly to death.
These are the people.
This is the human dawn. As for me, I would rather
Be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man.
But we are what we are, and we might remember
Not to hate any person, for all are vicious;
And not be astonished at any evil, all are deserved;
And not fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed.
