Literature is the building block of human society. We privilege literature because it allows us to communicate directly and honestly with people who are separated from us by time, geography, or linguistically. I mean, I don’t want to get all libertarian on you, but for me, stories are about communication. If my language gets confusing –if I word order incorrect or if I parlo italiano, then I build a barrier between you and me. Yet literature overcomes this. Writing is an outgrowth of that human urge to use language to communicate complex ideas and experiences between people. Whether you’re reading Shakespeare or bad fan fiction, reading is always an act of empathy. It’s always an imagining of what it’s like to be someone else.
You see, as separate beings living inside our own bodies feeling only our emotions, it is extremely hard to get other people to feel what we are feeling. When _____ died in ____, how did you feel? Imagine trying to explain how you’re feeling to your friend, so instead of saying ‘I am sad. This has made me sad”, which is extremely dull in its own regard, instead you say I am completely obliterated. My heart is broken. I feel so terrible because my heart has been shattered into a million pieces. Now, a few things are happening here. First, in excellent news, your heart has not been shattered into a million pieces. It is pumping blood in precisely the same way that it did before. Secondly, even better, you are not in fact strewn everywhere having been blown up. Using the techniques of hyperbole, in the case of obliteration, and metaphor, in the case of a shattered heart, to try describing the things that are happening inside of you, your friend now knows how you are feeling, or at least can imagine. Without using compelling figurative language, and just saying ‘I am sad’, your friend will struggle to empathize with you. Now imagine that you’re trying to communicate far more complicated and distinct experiences and emotions. And instead of trying to communicate them to your friend, you’re trying to talk to strangers, some of whom may live very far away and, potentially, live centuries after your death. Not only that, but instead of this happening during a pleasant conversation, they are reading your words on a page. So, they can’t hear your intonation or your arms flailing in the air, the look of hurt on your face.
And this is why so many works of great literature are considered great work of literature. Because they communicate emotions and lives so extraordinarily. They deepen our understanding of emotions by comparing and contrasting with the world around us. Shakespeare has held up against the test of time so phenomenally well; almost 500 years later we are still reading this mans work. Shall I compare Thee to a summer’s day? I’d like to remind you why this piece keeps reoccurring so persistently. And before you grown, don’t worry, I have shortened it.
Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But by eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee
Now with these lines Shakespeare deepens our understanding of this woman, broadens our idea of beauty and engages us into his narrative. He could’ve just as easily said “You are pretty, I like you”, but do you think we would really be reading that four hundred years later? The answer is no. Why? Because we wouldn’t care. We wouldn’t understand why this woman is so incredible to this man, just as if your friend wouldn’t understand nor care the torment you are facing over ____ if you had said, ‘I am sad’. Literacy shapes human emotions because it embodies them, records them and carry’s them on.
If you read, you have a fuller understanding of lives other than your own, which will help you to be more empathetic, and thereby reading can give you linguistic tools to share your own story. So go write about ____, because I’m sure in four hundred years someone will want to read that, so long as you give it enough emotion.