Literature review

What is literature?

How it shaped me? 

       From the very first day of my graduation I have come to know that,

“Literature is the mirror of society”

       I didn’t know it’s meaning. It was an answer for me to the all questions about literature. Three years of my life I have passed with this single definition. I was studying and finding how it mirrors the society!! and especially which society? But I was not able to find it. I have learned language but without proper understanding of literature.

      When I have started studying in Department of English, I have given a written test about ‘what is literature?’ as a part admission process. Again I have written the same definition. After two years of Masters and studying literature almost 5 to 6 hours in a day, when I have read the same test paper, I understood that whatever I have written in the paper was my shallow understanding of literature.

       Now, it has changed or I can say developed a bit. Now, as per my understanding, Literature is of two kinds, first is the books and papers you buy from the shop and second is when you live the lives hidden in that book. When we feel pain and happiness of different lives in the book and when we learn to live through characters from books, at that time we really come to know about “what is that particular literature...”

       For me literature is a “Change” in us after we understand it.  All can read but only few can understand. When we feel the conflict of Hamlet towards his life and we understand the philosophical point of view of grave digging scene, we really understood it. That understanding changes our way of thinking. That change is not permanent but it leaves its effects in our mind. Literature contains various ways of thinking in one piece of book! It has the villain like Iago and the passionate hero like Othello. It contains a housewife like Mrs. Ramsay and a girl with free thinking like Lily Briscoe. It contains absurdity and nothingness like meaninglessness of Vladimir and Estragon’s life and their condition. It contains Frankenstein’s innocent monster and Edger Allan Poe’s nocent, evilest and harmful humans. It gives us numerous ways of living life. It gives us all character’s way of thinking and understanding of why they are behaving in a particular manner.

        All these experiences can change us. We live thousand times in one life through literature. It attacks harshly and also brutally kills our beautiful dreams (illusions) of life. Literature hurts our pride and ego, and also heals our heart. It criticises us and also praises us but ultimately it changes us. 

      No one can bind literature in any one particular definition because it is made from language and as Derrida said,

“Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique”

      Literature is not easy to define in language but we can feel it, understand it and express it through emotions. Catharsis is the way of getting literature. We feel the pain with the death of Yank and when Santiago catches the fish, we feel like we have won the battle, when he thinks about fish and act of killing as a sin, we also start thinking about the right and wrong. It brings the change in us. We grow with each reading. We live with experiences of Briscoe, who accepted all criticism on her and got her vision, of Santiago, who never gave up, of Hester Prynne, who fought alone with the world for her identity, and we live life. 

It affects! It hurts! It changes!