How Literature shaped me?

What is Literature?

Throughout these five years I came through various definition of Literature. First is very common and famous definition – 

“Literature is mirror of the society”. But it is not so because mirror shows only one side of us while literature shows the dual side of people.

“Literature is something that reflects society, makes us think about ourselves and our society, allows us to enjoy language and beauty, it can be didactic, and it reflects on the human condition. It both reflects ideology and changes ideology, just like it follows generic conventions as well as changing them. It has social and political effects: just ask Salman Rushdie or Vladamir Nanakov. Literature is the creation of another world, a world that we can only see through reading literature: just like Harry Potter and series of it.”

Moreover, What Literature mean in the words of Franz Kafka, that –

“I think we ought to read only the kinds of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? …we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”

Likewise, Julian Barnes’ definition about Literature is something like this,

“The things Literature was all about: love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God.”

According to me,

 “Literature is the treasure of Knowledge which never going to be ends.”

But now the point is that how this treasure of Knowledge shaped me. What kind of knowledge I getting from this treasure?

Let starts from the very beginning at my B.A. level.

“Exaggeration always destroying,

Exaggeration leads towards tragic facts.”

That’s what I learn from “Tughlaq” and the same theme carried out in “Dr. Faustus” by Christopher Marlow; “Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hide” by Robert Louis Stevenson; “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley.

Mary Shelley also talks about the patriarchal power and also tries to deconstruct the idea of it through creating such kind of monster. The importance of women in the society is very low and each and every stage they are humiliated, suppressed or oppressed by male dominance society. But Virginia Woolf highly criticized this society through putting such argumentative point in “To the Lighthouse” that-

Why women cannot write and paint?

Likewise, Milton describe the argumentative nature of women through the character of Eve in the year 1667 that’s what Virginia Woolf proved out into the year 1927 through the character of Lily Briscoe. Even Jane Austen digs deep and carried out how the patriarchal society operates.

So these all text teach me that not be the character like Mrs. Ramsay, who pretending that she is good while she also wants the symptoms of Lily Briscoe, who live life freely. In short individuality is everything. Freedom is everything. One can have the choice to live life how they want to live. This thing I learn from “the Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Afterward, the novel “The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga, also talks about the same idea that-

Individualism is everything. Why are we waiting for others changes rather change ourselves? I think that India is great country. India finds everything. But this text criticized the idea of habit of India people who believe that India is find out everything. This novel got the criticism that Adiga feeding English people’s mentality through this novel.

So I must say that they have very limited knowledge about the literature. Maybe they not read T.S.Eliot’ “The Waste Land”, who criticized his own land to call it as a Waste Land. So, it teaches me that if we are wrong at some point we must accept it and always be ready to change ourselves. Further in “Gulliver’s Travels”, Swift also criticized his own culture.

Furthermore, the Old man and the Sea, teach me that “EVERY DAY IS NEW DAY”. Dedication, determination and hard work are ultimate truth that I learn from this novel.

“Be Skeptical” towards everything that I learn from Julian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending” and from Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”. Doubt everything and not believe in anything easily.

J.K.Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” teach me that “DEATH IS INEVITABLE”. Fear from the death one cannot harm others existence. Hatred, jealousy, murder is not the ultimate elements for living good life rather love and friendship is ultimate elements to living good life.

In the critical situation God always help us that I learn from Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Chetan Bhagat’s “One Night at the Call Center”, Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”, and “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville.

Totally opposite to that is what Samuel Beckett talks about in “Waiting for Godot”. It aware us about the RESPONSIBILITIES that human being have. Normally people don’t fulfill their responsibilities so they hide themselves under the curtain of religion. It always reminds me whenever I take breathing that we are habituated to doing the things.

Likewise, we never see ourselves that where are we wrong. We always try to put ourselves into margin. Moreover we always are craving sympathy from other. That’s what the African Literature talks about. They tries to look back to themselves that where are they wrong. What is their fault? In reality we also make ourselves like "BICHARA KIND" of people and want sympathy from other. So it makes our life one step backward. But here all the African Literature not gives us pleasure instead of that it is give us frustration, hatred, anger and what not. These books were not written out of compassion but out of compulsion.

The post-colonial Literature talks about those who are intentionally wiped out from the map or not having voice, it giving voice to them. It is centering the decenter.

In short literature is for those who are marginalized by the power. It giving space to them and talking from their point of view or perspective.

So, in a way I got lots of things from the Literature but when it became the matter of practical use of literature, it may fail. Accept this i more like all theories and all post-colonial literature and some modern literature.