How Literature Has Expanded My Mind

 

 

We live a country that actively discourages critical thinking. Anything the textbook says is correct. Any opinion or idea that disagrees with what is prescribed is wrong.

At school, I would listen to my teachers’ words religiously and they listened only to the textbook. The prescribed answer is the right answer. The teacher’s answer was my answer. Anything outside of this is wrong.

In other words, I had never approached a text critically.

I decided to major in English and this would change my life for the better. Unlike school, my college curriculum demanded critical thinking skills. To study literature, I had to unlearn many things. A good part of the curriculum consisted of books I wouldn’t have spared a second glace.

Those are very old books containing obsolete ideas talking about antique people with whom I, a girl belonging to the Post-postmodern era would not be able find an ounce of resemblance.

But I had to study those books and I did study them. A surface reading of them left a sour taste in my mouth. I couldn’t understand the hype about them so, I listened to lectures, watched video essays and did some extra reading. After doing all of this, I finally understood that the problem was with me.

Yes, those books are from time period I can only see in movies, their ideas are obsolete and their people are antique but I was able to see the chain of humanity connecting us to them.

Satan’s speech in Paradise Lost affects us even today. We are able to relate the complex layers of emotions which coloured Satan’s character in Paradise Lost. We all have lost our own paradise too.

Much like Hamlet most of us are lost in today’s world struggle to take a stance. Information is shoved upon our faces constantly and we freeze; we cannot move, much less act or respond to all of it.

In the 21^st century, we are all Hamletian.

I was approaching a text with preconceived notions and let those notions stain my approach. This not only made my reading biased but also shallow.

I still disagree with the ideas presented in those books but the methodology has changed. Instead of just dismissing those ideas because they are not compatible in the 21^st century, I sit and think about why I believe they are incompatible. I take my time to learn about those ideas, their origins and their results before making my counter argument.

This is how literature has helped me expand my mind. It sharpened my ability to identify and understand the nuances in each and every text. It has taught me to look at the margins of a text. All of this has helped me understand that not everything is what it appears to be.