Reading and Writing: How It Has Affected Me.
The significance of literature in society today is no doubt profound. Experiences I have had with reading and writing have helped to shape my understanding of the past as well as the present. There have been both positive and negative times in my education with reading and writing, yet I must always muster up the strength to continue on even when the negative times are more prominent in my memory. Literature is indeed great, but that is only true when an individual chooses the material rather than having it forced upon them. Books are something to be enjoyed and only read by those who will do just that. Reading and writing is an art form that is rapidly decaying, and I believe that if it is forced upon us that will continue to happen.
I was once enthralled by the thought of reading a book whether it be in class or in the confines of my own room. Then once specific books began to become “required reading” they began to lose their magic. By being forced to endure such bland books my love for reading has dwindled. When I was younger and could choose the books I read there was no stopping me once I began. The idea that a reader can fall in love with the stories in books is a truly great thing. When Birkerts speaks of his daughter’s experience he says, “But we must also try to avoid any association of the medicinal-that books are good for her and that reading is a duty”.¹ This shows that reading cannot be looked at so sternly if people are to continue in their endeavors in literature.
Many memories come to mind when I think of writing, but one sticks out more than the others: poetry. My English class my senior year of high school was based on the annotation of poems. This experience of having to do such a tedious task completely threw me off poetry. The constant picking apart at the specific meaning of the poem ruined it for me due to the fact that it left no room for interpretation. What the teacher said it meant was the “correct” way and we were not able to figure it out or discuss it ourselves. By repeatedly forcing the information into me instead of allowing my class to enjoy it, I now have a deep disdain for it.
Reading to me is supposed to be something a person can take pleasure in but I rarely find that to be true anymore. Birkerts says, “Literature holds meaning not as a content that can be abstracted and summarized, but as experience”.² If I had been more able to simply experience writing instead of having it “abstracted and summarized”, reading would be a completely different thing to me. My experiences when I was still in elementary and middle school were positive due to the lax environment. The choice to pick our own books with just the incentive of a good grade allowed the freedom that I so greatly enjoy. Once high school hit, there was no longer the freedom with reading but a structured curriculum for what books to read. These are the experiences that have shaped my feelings on reading, and although I still love to read books of my choosing, I frown upon being forced to read dull material.
The idea of writing, on the other hand, is something I tend to enjoy more than reading. Writing allows me as an individual to broaden my thought on a specific issue and to say what I am thinking. Even though there are prompts I am given to answer, there is more freedom than if I were given a book and told to read. The ideas that are able to be expressed during a paper can at times be liberating. When I was in the tenth grade my English teacher gave us a wide range of freedom when it came to choosing our topics. The books he gave us to read also helped due to their enticing themes. By showing us that writing can be used as an expression of ones feelings instead of a simple answer to a question, he kept my love of writing alive.
Reading and writing have both had a profound affect on me, both good and bad. Through my years of experience I have learned that they are important factors in one’s life, yet the way which we are allowed to learn it determines how we feel about it. The two entities have profound power and have allowed me to express the way I feel. Freedom in both is essential in order to keep the love of the art alive. Reading should always be something we should feel the obligation to do, but the texts themselves should for the most part be our choice. Writing on the other hand must be structured, but once a certain amount of mastery has been accomplished our ideas should be able to run free on the page. Reading and Writing to me are important solely for the fact that they broaden our horizons and hopefully evoke our emotions.
Bibliography
1. Birkerts, Sven. Gutenberg Elegies. 2. 1. NY,NY: Faber and Faber, Inc., 2006. 29,32. Print.
