As an English major, I am invariably asked if I’m going to be a teacher. I’m still learning how to let this question slide off my back without letting it ruffle my rather drab feathers. It shows the ignorance of our culture and how it lacks to see the inherent worth of the liberal arts. To assume that my future English degree is only good for teaching is like assuming an engineering major plans to play with Legos and show little kids how to use them for a career. (Before I continue, I have many friends who are education majors and they are some of the toughest people I know. I do not mean to disrespect education majors but rather merely point out there are so many other options, as well.) Most people I come across who assume my teacher-status do not understand that literature is more than a class to be taught in schools. But, truth be told, I have little right to be upset. I am a poor college student with only the faintest of ideas what I want my future to look like. However, what I do know is that I am not going to be a teacher.
Then what is the point of being an English major? Why study literature if I do not intend to teach it as a profession? I’ve decided to list just a few reasons:
1. I like literature.
This one is very basic. I'm that girl who stays up too late—into the wee hours of the morning—reading a novel. I love to enter myself into the world of the story, discovering the characters as they adapt to situations and change because of dilemmas, either for the better or for the worse. They hesitate where you would hesitate, leap into action when you might and mysteriously love the inexplicable, as people do. They say real sentences and make real mistakes in timing or judgement. In the end, there is always something to be gleaned from the experience.
2. Stories are about people.
A well told story’s characters burst with human emotion. It is the reason I like literature (including poetry). As Ernest Hemingway said, "A writer bleeds out onto the page." Every story, because it is written by a person, will irrevocably be about the human state, whether it is exploring a common theme of humanity or delving into a more personally-told scenario. Therefore, books can allow for countless hours of both entertainment and study on the most complex beings on earth.
3. Literature is necessary to society.
I actually had a hard time believing this one, myself, until last year. Studying literature through a historical lens, I started to see a pattern. A society that valued literature tended to grow, while one that did not withered. I concluded something similar to George Santayana’s famous saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Because literature studies human behavior, a society that does not value literature does not advance and is doomed to relearn lessons every generation or so. By studying literature, we learn from those before us and can advance and grow as a society.
This is not an exhaustive list as for why one should appreciate literature, and I am just beginning my higher education and looking forward to what else I will discover about my field.
I am still unsure what career path to pursue. I do not have my life plan laid out before me or an agenda for what to accomplish in order to achieve that perfect résumé. But that’s okay.
Literature is about more than the job. It is about one another and yourself, looking inward to effectively look outward and see people for who they are. Good literature is a mirror, which turns into a doorway.
