Final Blog

I think studying literature is very important. Literature has been around since the first language was created, and even before telling stories with drawings. Literature is important, I think, because it teaches us so much about the person and the culture he/she was writing in. Literature is also the source of most of our history, and we would know a lot less about our past if it was not for literature. Literature can also be intended to entertain, and some of the world’s best stories have only been passed down due to literature. Also, I think literature is very important, especially to the writers of it, because they can express their ideas without speaking which sometimes gets in the way of someone trying to explain themselves and their ideas. The three main reasons to study literature are to experience, experiment and expand.
The main reason I enjoy reading literature is for the experience. Just by reading someone’s work you can learn about their gender, race, historical eras, social classes and state of mind. I think this helps us broaden our understanding of other people and, more importantly, life itself. When you read great writer’s literature it almost puts you into their world and you can feel what they are feeling and understand them. I loved the experience of reading “The Hobbit” this semester. Reading it almost put you in Middle Earth and Tolkien is so good at explaining this world that it is very easy to imagine it and experience it. Also reading the different selections for the literary salons, I think, was a great experience. It put us in the shoes of so many different personalities and different time frames and cultures. Also reading and writing poetry had the same affect.
I think experimenting is also a huge part of literature. I have never really had a lit class where we have experimenting with so many different forms of writing. We constructed short stories and poetry in unconventional ways I found very interesting. Doing this, I think, helped us understand what it’s like to go through writing all kinds of literature. Also the experience of performing our poems and plays was a very new experience. I’m not used to doing anything like that and I think it was a good experience for me. It put me in the shoes of actors and poets performing their work and gave me a new respect for the genius of a lot of these people and how easy it is to express themselves.

The last reason to study literature is to expand. I liked, especially with the book clubs, reading a piece of literature and everybody sharing their ideas on this piece of work. This was affective in expanding your understanding about the story and sometimes other things in your life. It’s great when the view or ideas of someone else change your mind or further your knowledge on a subject. I also loved expanding my knowledge on different writers and important pieces of work that we discussed in our literary salons.
There are many reasons why we read literature and it is important what we get out of it. I think literature can teach us a lot about other people and especially sometimes ourselves. I also think literature also bridges the gap between generations and helps them understand one another. This class changed my idea of literature and made me think of how important it is. Without literature many amazing stories would have been lost, and more importantly many genius ideas and views on subjects would have been lost and the world would not be nearly what it is today.