Literature's Impact-Rough Draft

Literature’s Impact-Rough Draft

There are two types of people in the world, those who read and those who do not. The latter category doesn’t only contain those who are illiterate and unable to read, but those who are unwilling to pick up a book and sit with it for a while. Those who are too busy, or bored by books do not understand their weight. Books do more than just provide entertainment for a long airplane flight. They provide world’s to escape too, concepts to explore and feelings that stay with you. The books I’ve read have positively and negatively shaped my life from early childhood books to required school readings each has changed the way I perceive the world or how I visualize my education and future. My parents always read to

I would run around my yard by myself or with friends pretending to be characters from my various books. My favorite, was pretending that I was out in the woods, living the pioneer life like Laura Ingels Wilder. In Wilder’s first book Little House in The Big Woods a young Laura recounts her days living in the woods with her family where she would collect wood chips, help cook meals and look after her family and Pa would play the fiddle. I would mimic Laura and crusade around my backyard with a pretend apron and bonnet collecting flowers or branches and pretending to feed chickens or pigs. Another novel The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster uses whimsical wordplay to kickstart a child’s imagination both in reality and within the book. The main character Milo is bored with nothing to do until a mysterious tollbooth arrives in his room and transports him to Dictionopolis where he meets characters such as Rhyme and Reason, and Tock the Watchdog. These creative lands and play on words create a new dimension of storytelling for young readers like myself at the time. Books like Little House in the Big Woods and The Phantom Tollbooth taught me the value of my own imagination and forged the creative thinker I am

Three characters that I related to were Alaska Young in John Green’s young adult novel Looking For Alaska, Esther from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Eleanor from Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell. All three were strong female characters who dealt with their own insecurities. Through middle and high school I struggled with my self esteem and body image and I could relate to these women and how they dealt with issues of depression, anxiety and negative body image. Alaska Young, the title character for the novel struggles with depression in a sarcastic and flippant manner. She is one of the more complex characters in the novel and the characters around her struggle to understand her existence and self destructive tendencies. Sylvia Plath’s character Esther Greenwood in the Bell Jar is similarly enigmatic and shares a morbid humor with Alaska Young. Both characters use this to mask their own feelings. I relate to Esther because of her drivenness to be successful and when she does not get accepted into the Summer Writing Program she falls into a deep depression because she was not able to execute her goals. Next, Eleanor Douglas is described as a “Round peg in a square hole” she navigates falling in love while not completely loving herself. Eleanor feels self conscious about her weight and