Literature: A Life Changer

When we talk about literature first question arise in our mind that what is literature? When our first day started in the Dept. at that time same question asked by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir at that time so many answers given by students. Everyone has different perspectives to see things. That’s why if we asked individually then answer is different.

Literature word cannot include some particular things but its covers majority of the things. Generally we think that literature represents emotions, feelings, ideas, thoughts, critical thinking, arguments, etc. Literature is the mirror of society. It reflects the reflection of society. But literature is beyond those things. I study so many poems, novels, short stories, criticism and plays during my journey of five years of literature. If we talk about any particular poem or novel it gives some kind of preaching message. Literature parted into two perspectives first is individual and second is perspective of society.  In literature, society imposed ideas and rules on people’s mind and we have to follow it. For example if we pick up the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter’ we can find puritan mentality of that people. So, if we think about any particular Era of the English Literature it presents that’s time of culture, mindset of people, lifestyle of an individual, habit of that people, education system, religion etc.

So, let’s have one look on how literature affects to my life.

When I started my journey of Graduation at that time I know about some part of literature but I don’t know how to apply it in real life. Then my dream is to get Master Degree and finally I entered a new and fresh type of atmosphere. It is the atmosphere of Bhavnagar University, Department of English. So, here I started my journey with this question that “What is Literature?” At that time whatever in my mind I wrote this thing in that entrance test. Then this question discussed in our first class of Semester 1. Then through so many blog tasks and other online activities we reflected literature.

Through characters of the novels, poems or any kind of short stories we come know about that effect in our life that we have to fight with critical circumstances. We cannot find directly changes in our life but indirectly so many changes take place in our life. Our behavior, way of living life, attitude, thinking process, understanding different things changes during studying literature.

From the time of age of Renaissance to this New Literatures we studied so many novels, plays, poems, dramas, and short stories. Hamlet, Paradise Lost, Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Middlemarch, Oliver Twist, The Old Man and The Sea, Sense and Sensibility, Frankenstein, One Night @ The Call Centre, Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code, The Grain of Wheat, Things Fall Apart, Waiting for the Barbarians these all text we studies in Post Graduation. All texts presents such common themes like struggle of life, revenge motif, magical world and fantasy, religion, identity of black and white etc.

Literature represents life-long process; we cannot identify any group, class or age to identify it. Any person learns literature from their point of view. It gives new enlightenment in our life if we observe minutely these things.     

We can’t say that effects of literature always positive but sometimes it is negative also. It’s all about our perspectives that which side we take. It gives life to the people because sometimes through the books or any kind of literature mentality or path of person changes.

 According to my point of view,

                          “Person without Literature is like body without Soul.”