Full disclosure: I am a creative writing major, so literature is a huge part of my college career. In this semester alone, I’m reading more than 10 novels, ranging from Jane Austen’s entire collection to "Citizen: An American Lyric" by Claudia Rankine, covering over 200 years of writing in the process. That’s not even counting dozens of short stories and poems. I understand the importance of literature to the writer and the importance to society in general. But what role does literature play in the average college student’s life?
Firstly, literature transcends all disciplines. You can learn about anything you want, from science and math to politics and music. Any information you could possibly want can be found through literature. That is part of the reason we are all in college in the first place -- to grow our minds, expand our knowledge and become more worldly. Even if some of that knowledge is only good for cocktail parties! Not to mention that literature improves our imagination and opens our mind. We are able to travel both through time and space when we read. Nowhere else can you explore Harlem during the Roaring 20s, or Middle Earth on Frodo’s adventure, or even experience the first footsteps on new land with Christopher Columbus’s crew.
Kudos must be given to one of my professors for this last reason. I started this semester at one of the lowest points of my life and was not looking forward to three intense literature classes. My professor advised that instead of looking at the upcoming reading as a challenge, see it as a chance to look for shared experiences in the content we read in class. We need literature in our lives in order to more fully understand the human experience and find ourselves in it.
No, perhaps I cannot fully put myself in Marianne Dashwood’s shoes in "Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen, but reading about her heartbreak and complete despair, I related to her, as I had suffered the exact same thing myself. She recovered and found love, and it gave me hope that I could, too. And, indeed, an old friend of mine was not a Robert-Cohn reincarnate from Ernest Hemingway’s "The Sun Also Rises." Their behavior did parallel each other however and by exploring the character Hemingway created, I learned more about the type of person my friend was and how his toxic behavior was actually part of a pattern. Perhaps most importantly were the repeating themes of loss and search for self-identity scattered throughout my reading, from "The Life of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce to Emily Dickinson’s poetry and so many other places.
Reading literature can heal you and challenge you. It can reveal your friends to you, and reveal yourself in new ways. It can encourage you to grow in new ways and give you new perspectives on life. Truth be told, you won’t know all the great things literature can do for you until you start reading it. And if you dislike reading, you just haven’t found the right book for you yet. Keep reading, keep growing, and don’t ever stop.
