When you encounter a book, what do you think? Are you enveloped by dark memories of high school curriculums or perhaps the comforting memories of a parent reading to you at bedtime? Your past experiences invariably alter future preferences. However, you’re probably seeing that book in front of you for the first time; it offers you a brand new experience — why not read it? But more commonly we are asked, “Why read?”
Literature, the printed word, allows you the life you enjoy even while reading this. Busses, computers, shoes, that fancy green picture of Washington in your wallet or purse — these exist today because of literature. The technology required for the production of any of those examples requires more knowledge than one person may contain, let alone independently develop. Literature forms the trestle that our ivy garden of society grows upon — a useless book will offer us no support, but the meaningful and insightful corpus in Humankind’s library holds up our world.
Precisely this ability to communicate is what has allowed human culture to flourish. Thoughts of individuals passed, recorded in writing, knowledge through generations to a point in time where combined understanding permitted new technology to grow. Oral traditions could not adequately relate the exactness of science and the brilliance of an individual. From theories of government structure to fertilizer, the written word pushed societies beyond small, ignorant, isolated communities. So, you may ask, why do we still need to read if the hard part is done?
Well, people in a culture must possess a common language to live with one another. Defense, trade, the satisfaction of basic needs — to survive today as a group, the ability to relate ideas such as these concisely is necessary. How long could our food supply last if each distributor spoke mutually unintelligible languages? But beyond that, literature allows for sharing experiences. It allows vast cultures to exist by identifying common histories and traits, goals and accomplishments across entire continents. Understanding another’s experiences, especially from outside your initial culture, brings tolerance and humanity; it begins working toward a unified global identity. How about ending racism as a reason to read?
Furthermore, the written word established human history, and it is with this history that we can live beyond the present; with our history we can make our future. By sharing individual knowledge, humans may build on previous findings to create even greater accomplishments. You almost certainly own a computer and sleep in a bed and perhaps have used a condom. That computer would not exist without shared ideas over many generations about specifics in manufacturing plastics, in physics theories on electricity, in teaching algebra, in manufacturing glass and in chemical properties of metal ores. Your bed would be a mat of straw without someone writing down what a spring consists of, and then a reader deducting how he can use that to save you backaches in the morning. Birth control would not exist without documenting and continuing a discussion on biology through ages until prophylactics were deemed “moral” for use. Sharing such knowledge without having to trust a child’s “telephone game” allows us our powerful technology that we now can take for granted — and provides the visionary with the tools to take us further.
Wonderfully, literature also offers us variety, and hence, a choice of opinions. The written word is a bastion of dissent and social change. What quality of food would you swallow if works like “The Jungle” never aroused public outcry? And literature provides historical examples too, so that we do not have to repeat terrible errors. For instance, how soon do we have until another atomic bomb detonates in hostility if we lack the gruesome literary reminders of its massively devastating effects?
Literature provides stability to human life through shared thought. Ranging from an understanding of the unfamiliar — rather than an abject fear of it — to the expansion — rather than stagnation — of human ability, reading teaches us about living. Picking up a collection of Wordsworth’s poetry will prompt us to discover truly renewable resources by reminding us of the earth’s beauty. Spending your nights with “Atlas Shrugged” will teach corporate ethics and industrial growth through examples of heroes and villains in power.
Why read? Read because literature allows our lives to be useful progressions. When we read, we discover what it means to be human, to say, “I am.” And don’t you think, most importantly, it exposes us to the epitome of human power: the Question Mark?
Matthew Clausen ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in literature.
