Analysis Of How Reading Makes Us More Human By Karen Swallow Prior

Humans, are they Human?

The article “How Reading Makes Us More Human” by Karen Swallow Prior is a very well structured and informative article. Prior immediately grasps the reader’s attention by providing a variety of examples to support the purpose of her article. Although the article contains credible ideas on reading’s effect on the brain, relating a person’s morality to their reading habits is narrow-minded and weakens the articles effect on the audience. Many of the points discussed in this article blur the focus of the article. This article raises more questions than it answers.

Having morals and being human are two vastly diverse concepts. Morality depends on a person’s view of what is right and what is wrong. This is a concept that needs to be thought about and put into action. Being a human requires no thought at all; either a person is born a human or they are not. There is no in between. Other author’s research is included on this topic specifically to showcase how common this misconception is. According to Prior’s findings,”…the wildly held belief that reading makes us more moral has little sport.”(qtd. Prior ). I agree with

Prior’s statements about reading great literature and how deep reading directly correlates to being a good person make me question her judgment. One of the most powerful questions in this article is, “Does great people make people better, or are good people drawn to great literature?”(Prior). I think that this is such a powerful question because in addition to making a claim, which is that good people and great literature are directly correlated, the question makes the audience think about themselves. The delivery of the statement was very nice, but I do not agree with the claim. In fact, I think that Prior could have gone into more detail on this particular topic. In both scenarios that she provides, there is no discussion of bad people, or those who do not read great