Reading Literary Books and Studying English Literature, Why?
*Both reflective essays below are written for two classes: Themes in Literature and Exploring Fiction
A Pleasure Seekers
(What Makes Me A Reader)
People
has many different hobbies to fill their time, but the most basic things are
reading, watching, and listening. Everyone read for different purposes, because
to be a literate is very important. Not everyone like to read, but many read
for pleasures including me. Everyone has their own taste and experience as a
reader, so here is mine.
I’m
not a bibliophile, but i’m on the stage where i found myself sniffing between books’ pages. I also like to go to the library or a bookstore just to see their
collection, and realizing i have spend hours there. As far as I can remember, i
started like to read since i was a kid. It actually started with manga or
Japanese comic, until i began to curious about what lies inside my father’s
bookshelf, and I vaguely remember about my first semi-serious book was about
Karl Marx. I’m not a hard reader, but i read a lot, and that’s the reason i wear
this eyeglasses since i was in second year of elementary school.
Because
i grew up in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, and there are only two bookstore which
only sell books in Bahasa, i used to read local and translations books. When i
was in junior high, i didn’t like fictions at all, back then i would choose
personal experience genre. Maybe, it was because as a young girl who grew up in
an ordinary town, i had a very strong desire to go out of my town, so i read
books about travelers a lot. I also like to read about someone’s job such as; journalist,
stewardess, director, etc, and maybe that was because as a teenage who didn’t
know what to do in the future, i found it interesting to see how everyone lives
differently. In high school, i had this Bahasa teacher who was really strict,
so we had to read a book within two weeks and present it in front of the class,
even though i was in science class. He persistently told us, that we have to
read a lot no matter what we read. That was when i started to came to the city
library, and apparently has many collections of great books. So i started
reading classic literary type of books such as; Frankenstein, Dracula, etc.
Somehow, i got interested in those types of books, and that’s because i’ve
heard and read short-stories when i was a child, you know it’s just like people
oftenly heard about Peterpan, Frankenstein, etc, but they don’t really know
what is that or where is the story come from, and that’s why i interested for
knowing the roots of the story.
When
I started college life last year, that was when i found it easy to get non-translation
book, and it made me really happy. I still interested in classical literary,
mostly the famous one such as; Catcher in The Rye, Phantom of The Opera, etc. I
read those kinds of famous classic literary books, because i want to know what
makes them considered as what most says books you have to read before you died.
But if a book is to classic, maybe the languange is too hard or i don’t like
the genre, i wouldn’t continue to read and just stop. But still, i would find
the summary in the internet to wrap the story.
I
don’t really have a favourite type of writing, but i prefer novel than
short-story, because in a short-story i often found the story would be hanging
in my mind, i would come up with so many possibilities and i don’t like that.
I’m the type of the reader who gets stuck on the author, i mean if the author
said a character is gone, i wouldn’t mind it again. Because i read for
pleasure, to get away from my riot mind for a while, and i would give my mind
wholly to where ever the author take me. I always imagine reading as having a
new friends or being someone else, i don’t want my life to getting in the way,
so i will leave all my life behind and come in a new whole word. That made me
realize, my favourite genre is fiction, just fiction without science or
historical. I can see that, because beside i want to get away from my mind, i
also kind of bored of my life. Not bored in a way i’m tired to live, but i want
something unreal, absurd, abstract, something beyond imagination, i love those
kinds of things. But, to find those types of book is not easy, so far my
favorite author is Haruki Murakami, and he is a Japanese so i couldn’t discuss
it in any class so far. His type of writing is so absurd, like suddenly a
hundred of mackerel is pouring from the sky and whatsoever, and that
bizzareness is somehow captivated me. Maybe that’s why i also really love
comic, because it just so weird, a lot of comic is nonsense. So far, my
favourite books are Kafka on The Shore by Haruki Murakami and Jukstaposisi by
Calvin Michel Sidjaja. Those two books are mindblowingly bizzare about life,
religion, and nature. Those books kind of reflecting my inner thought about
this life, about my deep curiousity and feelings about everything.
I usually
don’t like to read drama or romantical books because it’s not relatable with my
life, and also historical books because it’s so boring and i’m not interested.
Also, i don’t read saga and popular nowadays novel which made into movies, i
just don’t have interest with the popular things.
I’m
not pushing myself to set a target to read books, i will read whatever attract
me, and whenever i want to read it. I’m not pushing myself to be a fast reader,
in fact i like to read at a leisurely pace, to make sure words are alive and
vivid as i read them through my mind’s vision, since i’m a very visual type of
thinking. When i finished a novel, i wouldn’t read it again for a long time,
because i always imagine a book is where another life is going on, and it felt
like meeting someone new and as the story ended, i found it hard to finish it.
I
don’t have someone who really important to shape me as a reader, maybe my
father or friends who gave me some good books, but not really shaped me. I used
to follow my curiousity to find a book to read, or through the reader community
goodreads.com. But sadly, i have to confess i still judge books from its cover,
and somehow that embarrasses me.
So
i think that what makes me a reader, through my experience and my taste of
reading. I’m hoping to explore many books through literature major, not just in
English or Indonesian, but also great literatures all over the world.
#WHYLITERATUREMATTERS
Being exposed to the question, why literature matters, is very
challenging for me. For all I know, nor science studies which has the (what
they believe) exact answers for everything, neither social studies which give
answers with more into open-ended is not matter. It's just like the slogan that
is made by African American race in America #blacklivesmatter and followed by
the following not-so-sensational hashtag #alllivesmatter. Surely, I know that
it's not literally about “matters”, but it's a shame to think that some of the
wars and riots that happened in this life is because the lack of respect that
some people have. This lack of respect, I believe, could also be overcome with
literature and that is why literature is indeed matters according to my own
reflection with the help of Gillespie article.
From what I see, Gillespie had this challenged feeling to the
question, just the same way as I am. Moreover, he was a teacher and being
questioned about why we should believe what he think he believed is quite
confusing at first. But, Gillespie explained it directly and simply, that
through literature we can get a deeper understanding about our own empathy and
imagination. The realization as a teacher to make the students a better
individual, not just a smarter individual also stated sharply, which will lead
to human experience that is actually related to literature. At the end,
Gillespie sure that literature is indeed matters and needed by everyone.
Mostly, I agree to the reasons that Gillespie explained in his article. There are a few lines that I favorably highlighted which will be followed by the reasons of my agreement. First of all,”One of its potential benefits is to enlarge a reader's sense about the many possible ways to live”, is a good start to why literature matters. I can see that by knowing many possible ways to live means that we are hoping for a brighter future, we believe in hope and we're not scared of tomorrow. Surely, in business failure is a major problem, but life without motivation and hope is so boring. This way, we can see a life from someone else's perspective whose maybe more optimistic, and it can make us feel relieved to know that we are not the only one who are faced with problem, and we can learned from them. “Literature offers students diversity that their neighborhood may not”, this is the reason to the problems that I stated in the first paragraph. By knowing how other people living their live differently than our lives is actually very interesting, because none of us lives the same way. But, human scared of what they don't know, or at least what seems vague to them. That's why lack of knowledge and preferably lack of empathy towards other people is just a stupid way to live, moreover in this advanced technology era. The last, “Literature does not teach morals in a didactic way; rather, it gives us a chance to experience moral dilemmas”, this one is very important, because the morals given by literature are not really strict, even though it can be confusing. We can be in someone else's shoes and start figuring out how to live like that, even though we have the main character to solve everything in the end of the story, it feels like the author has given us the capability to think another ways to solve the problems and how to see them critically, and I think it's very good for our brain, moreover to empathize with other people and how to face similar problems in the real life.
The most important reasons, I believe, are my own thought from the perspective of a beginner in literature. I believe there is this one thing that differentiate us and any other living creatures in this earth, since maybe there's more higher form of creatures out there in another galaxy; feeling. For me, feeling is very sacred, because of it's abstract yet sensitive concept. Feeling is what makes us one, yet it can makes us far, in another word it's empathy. Sure, for some people the point in living is being success, but success is relative. Success which is followed by happy is perfect, at least for me. But as long that I'm happy, it's the real perfect. The cliche thing is that we human can not live without socialization with each other, but it's true. What's the point of living without having any feeling? The answer is robot; go to work everyday, nine to five, finding money to support life before death take us. That's why by reading literature, it's important to sharpen our feeling, even though it's for our own sake. Passion comes from feeling, and as long as we do what we love, it's great. But, it's better if we know what impact our passion makes for other people, not just doing what we loves with our biggest ego, and this is where we need to learn to empathize. To share that feeling to other people, trying to empathize what other people think is what makes us 'human'. Restated what Banksy, a famous graffiti artist, wrote “I see human, but no humanity.” This humanity comes from empathy, and we can try it by reading many literature that surely will broaden our ways of understanding our own concept of living and surely living side to side with other people peacefully.
One thing that struck me, why do we need to question everything to what we have believed, but why in the first place we didn't even question it. Gillespie started questioning this since his pragmatic colleague asking, this is the same way with an atheist asking me why do I believe in Allah. Maybe this is very sensitive, but somehow it bothers me, and it is just maybe due to the lack of my understanding about my concept of faith.
Bottom line, it is indeed very challenging to answer why literature matters to me, and a reminder that I have chosen literature as my concentration, also an enlightenment for my future career in the related areas. In the end, we human have to be respectful towards everyone and everything, and also for the sake of our own perspective towards life, so one way to deal with it is by literature. The greatest thing in this life is living with a true sense of humanity, that way we can truly live.
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