In the short story, How Mr. Dewey Decimal Saved My Life, by Barbara Kingsolver, there are many examples of how literature has shaped her life. She has been extraordinarily influenced by great writing pieces; so much so that it has truly changed the path she may have gone down. She was stuck in limbo, academically, without passion, and fueling a dark desire to change herself in the eyes of her peers. Kingsolver grew up in a small town, one where the course programming left something to be desired. As a woman, her only options were limited to one-time courses or Home Economics. After her first two years were completed in high school, she says this, “I found myself beginning a third year of high school in a state of unrest.” She was in an educational …show more content…
oblivion, banned to the confines of a tedious year of sewing and upholstering, with only study halls intermingled between the prisonous class. Life (namely, Miss Richey) had a different plan for her.
Richey assigns Kingsolver to organize and shelve every book in the library. In doing so, literature saved Kingsolver from the dullness of her day-to-day life. Nevertheless, monotony was not her only problem. She also had no passion or drive for school, but was uncertain about life, even going as far as to say, “I was developing a lean and hungry outlook.” But what that, ‘hungry outlook’ was for, was uncertain; she saw few career paths with the ‘practical’ skills she had learned in Home Economics, luckily, that aspect of her life would come from not within, but from the hallowed halls of the library, and from the dusty pages of classic literature. Her time categorizing books for Richey enlightened Kingsolver to the works of great writers, exposing her to the vast worlds, hidden, waiting to be found. Kingsolver most definitely found those world, immersing herself into them, allowing them to seep to the furthest corners of her brain, and changing her rural outlook to one of sophistication. This passion for reading allowed her to develop a sense of career, and facilitated her future as a writer. It did for her what schooling could not: give her a passion for
something. Consequently, by saving her from the world of tedium and fueling her passion, literature saved Kingsolver from something much more dangerous. “I was set hard upon wrecking my reputation in the limited ways available to skinny, unsought-after girls.” Her time sorting during study hall filled her day with meaning, desire, and most importantly, enjoyment, and therefore, kept her away from her deep-seated yearning to go down a darker path. By creating opportunities for Kingsolver, it stopped her from making inevitably regrettable decisions and the life that follows that. In the end, Kingsolver goes onto becoming a successful author, based not only on her unique skillset but, also on the power of Mr. Dewey Decimal –or more correctly, the organization system he created. Literature may not have solved all of Kingsolver’s problems, but the one’s it did solve, included her: academic limbo, passionless and bleak future, and desire to pursue a darker path.
Welty Acknowledges her mother, and her impressionability in influencing her has the eager reader, great author and person that she is when writing this book. Welty remembers her mother “picking up The Man in lower ten while [her] hair got dried enough to unroll from a load of kid curlers trying to make [her] look like my idol, Mary Pickford” this suggests that if she copied both Mary Pickford and her mother, her mother was also her idol because her mother “was very sharing of [the] feeling of Insatiability”. This shows that Welty picked up reading from her mother and that’s and Welty’s mother knew her daughter was easily influenced which is why she said Welty was “too impressionable”. This then reveals to readers the root of Welty’s compassion for books as she was growing up. Welty also remembers “a generation later… “her mother “reading the new issue of time magazine while taking the part of the Wolf in a game ... with the children”. This shows that the passion within Welty’s mother, that influenced Welty as a young child to read, has not burned out. Due to that wetly wants readers to understand that her mother has influenced her whole life and career with her burning passion to read. This tells readers that Eudora Welty’s own passion for reading will never cease to
What role has reading had in your life? Through the essay, One Writer's Beginnings, Eudora Welty explores the memories of her childhood that are intertwined with her love of reading. Using effective diction, illustrative exemplification, and tone Welty lovingly reconstructs the scenes that helped develop her intense hunger for books that has followed her throughout her life.
What makes a character real? Schooled is a novel written by Gordon Korman. The novel’s protagonist and is Capricorn Anderson, a 13 year old hippie who lives on a farm commune with his grandmother. Capricorn, however, has to live with another family and attend a public school when his grandmother breaks her hip and has to stay at the hospital for weeks. This paper discusses true-to-self Capricorn Anderson, his path and purpose in the text, his interactions and effect on others, and his change over time.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
What makes a character real? Schooled is a novel written by Gordon Korman. The novel’s protagonist and is Capricorn Anderson, a 13-year-old hippie who lives on a farm commune with his grandmother. Capricorn, however, has to live with another family and attend a public school when his grandmother breaks her hip and has to stay at the hospital for weeks. This paper discusses true-to-self Capricorn Anderson, his path, and purpose in the text, his interactions and effect on others, and his change over time.
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
Weldon, like Austen, endorses the power of literature as a tool for undermining social paradigms and enacting change “words are not simple things: they take unto themselves… power and meaning”. Weldon uses the character of Alice as a medium to enlighten her audience as to the importance of literature in enhancing and improving our lives and ourselves, “Truly Alice, books are wonderful things.”. Additionally, Weldon’s motif and extended metaphor of the ‘City of Invention’ serves to further highlight her view of the significance of literature throughout history and its relevance to every aspect of our lives. Weldon compares books to buildings and writer to builders, the “good builders“, like Austen, “carry a vision of the real world and transpose it into the City of Invention”. The detailed description of the “city’ creates an image within the responder’s mind, impressing upon them the sheer magnitude of literary work available to them to explore, including Austen’s work. The endorsement of literature as a vehicle for enlightening individuals and promoting self-improvement by Weldon throughout her epistolary text reflects Austen’s own views and allows the modern responder to better understand the power it has had, and continues to have, in our
Dewey the library cat is probably one of the most noteworthy cats that has ever been heard of. Dewey is an orange little tabby cat that the writer (Vicki Myron) found in the rain on her way to work, and brought Dewey with her to the library. From that instant Dewey the library cat grew up in a library lying on every book that he has seen. His name came from the Dewey Decimal System. He has unintentionally inspired thousands of people by being himself. He has Myron and the rest of the library staff play with him, feed him, and take care of him. He was truly the cat that everyone who has read it loved him. Even though some people didn't feel the same after reading Dewey. Dewey had a long life in the library that taught people to have fun, be happy, and be nice to people. He changed the author since she found him and being friends for years she wanted to share how she felt. His life is filled with multiple acts that inspire the mass of people who read it.
Bradbury attacks loss of literature in the society of Fahrenheit 451 to warn our current society about how literature is disappearing and the effects on the people are negative. While Montag is at Faber’s house, Faber explains why books are so important by saying, “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores” (79). Faber is trying to display the importance of books and how without them people lack quality information. In Electronics and the Decline of Books by Eli Noam it is predicted that “books will become secondary tools in academia, usurped by electronic media” and the only reason books will be purchased will be for leisure, but even that will diminish due to electronic readers. Books are significant because they are able to be passed down through generation. While online things are not concrete, you can not physically hold the words. Reading boost creativity and imagination and that could be lost by shifting to qui...
The use of Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy in this story is very thought-provoking. While we are presented with the image of a young Richard Rodriguez and his struggle to deal with his education and family life. We are also presented Hoggart’s image of the “Scholarship boy” the student who has ...
Schakel, Peter J., and Jack Ridl. The "Everyday Use." Approaching Literature: Writing, Reading, Thinking. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, J.
Stillinger, Jack, Deidre Lynch, Stephen Greenblatt, and M H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume D. New York, N.Y: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print.
Jack London, in his personal life, encountered many obstacles; which was reflected through his natural talent for writing. As a child, Jack London was “plagued poverty and hardship.” (Barksdale 1) Many of the prominent themes that stand out in London’s writing came from what he learned from living in poverty: independence, self-reliance and work ethic. These themes are a perfect representations of the qualities to have in order to achieve the ideal American dream. London was denied a “formal education and compensated with voracious reading” (Barksdale 1) and started work and the young
Listening to an inspirational song, reading an enjoyable book or writing a story can bring an individual encouragement and joy. Literature conveys knowledge, lessons and possibilities that stretch a person’s imagination, helping them to grow mentally and spiritually. The fictional character Guy Montag from Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451” found motivation and optimism in books, just as the author J.K. Rowling found reassurance and hope in her writing. The author J.K. Rowling found comfort in writing stories that helped her escape the adversities she experienced in her life. Similarly, the fictional character Guy Montag becomes hopeful for the future of mankind when he realizes he can preserve the knowledge and ideas of the past by saving books. Books, songs and stories bring inspiration to people, as literature allows them to imagine a different time and a better future. Both Montag and Rowling are able to find a more positive outlook through the enjoyment of literature.
The history of the Dewey Decimal Classification System (DDC) hearkens back to the very beginning of the modern library movement in the nineteenth century. The classification scheme’s progenitor was a man named Melvil Dewey who was born to a poor family in upstate New York in 1851. 1 His full name was Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey, but he was a man who supported language/spelling reform and had his named shortened to just Melvil Dewey. He even tried to have his family name further shortened to Dui. 2 In this he failed, but this is only one failure amongst his many successes. Dewey had a profound effect on the library movement in America. He originated the DDC in 1873 and had it published and patented in 1876. There has been some speculation that Dewey synthesized ideas from a number of sources and coordinated them into a unified system. There is some evidence to suggest that Dewey may have been introduced to the idea of a decimal classification by a pamphlet written by Nathaniel Shurtlaff in 1856. 3 The DDC may also have been partly adapted from a scheme that William Lorrey Harris had formed from a structure expressed by Sir Francis Bacon, and refined by the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. 4 Regardless of where the scheme emerged from, however, Dewey was the first person to properly expand on and define his ideas concerning a classification that placed books into a relative order based on disciplines rather than an alphabetical order, or one that simply identifies a shelf space for a specific book. The DDC was the first timely modern system that introduced features like relative locations and a relative index. This allowed books to be placed in stacks based on their relationships to one a...