Why I Read

1268 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: the idea of time

"Why did you read all four books?" a peer asked me after I revealed my summer reading list. "Well," I said, "I thought they would punish me if I didn't." Was this a total lie to get someone off my back, or was it the truth? While it was probably a combination of both, I decided I read for myself. I read to find out about the issues I had been struggling with, like time and humanity. To have feelings that I have never experienced and to escape. With these books I was no longer a scared middle-class white boy from Tennessee, and though it may be cheesy, I was anyone, anywhere.

The issue of time has caught my attention since reading Siddhartha. I desperately want to understand time since it is the basis of society. We live in the present, but these words are in the past. Sure, you could read the words over again, but the first impression is the past. So the past is really all we can look at. But the past does not matter if it is temporary. In 1984 Orwell states, "he who controls the past controls the future." The verb "controls" is very important here. It is in a present tense, stating that he who can change the past owns the future. So why would the past matter if it is changeable? The year could not even be known. It could be the same day forever. Why does the past matter anyway... or even the present? On a large time scale everything we know is but a blip. Einstein's Dreams proposes a profound statement which indirectly points out that the supernatural controls time. We will not be able to slow down the last second, so it will last 'forever'. We can't touch time; it's out of our reach. So therefore, life as we know it has an ending when God says so. Time will continue to pass until the end at its seemingly eternal rate. It's like a river, unstoppable and ever flowing. Trying to battle the current is futile. The pain just makes you feel time pass more slowly when in fact the river keeps running. While personal existence may seem unimportant, Celie from The Color Purple brings across an important statement, " I'm poor, I'm black, I may be ugly... But I am here." While the past, future, and present may seem incredibly small, it's all we have.

Show More
Related

  • The Solute Concentration of a Potato

    649 Words  | 2 Pages

    If we say that the right hand side in picture 1 is the potato, and the

    Read More

  • Cathleen Schine's 'I Was A Teenage Illiterate'

    1418 Words  | 3 Pages

    My reading experience in junior-high and first three years of high school were not so much different. I had never been enthusiastic to read about predetermined topics assigned by my teacher and they continued to assign predetermined reading topics that made me feel frustrated and at times uncomfortable. But there was positivity that came out of these repulsive and devastating books, such as Lord of The Flies by William Golding or The Night by Elie Wiesel. Lord of the Flies caused me to confirm that humans must have rules and a government to help

    Read More

  • College Admissions Essay: The Value Of Picture Books

    475 Words  | 1 Pages

    I began to read not out of entertainment but out of curiosity, for in each new book I discovered an element of real life. It is possible that I will learn more about society through literature than I ever will through personal experience. Having lived a safe, relatively sheltered life for only seventeen years, I don’t have much to offer in regards to worldly wisdom. Reading has opened doors to situations I will never encounter myself, giving me a better understanding of others and their situations. Through books, I’ve escaped from slavery, been tried for murder, and lived through the Cambodian genocide. I’ve been an immigrant, permanently disabled, and faced World War II death camps. Without books, I would be a significantly more close-minded person. My perception of the world has been more significantly impacted by the experiences I've gained through literature than those I've gained

    Read More

  • Ambiguity In The Scarlet Letter Essay

    1394 Words  | 3 Pages

    How people read and interpret books truly depends on their age. Readers start, in the premature stages, by reading children’s books; books written simply to tell a story rather than give a deep and meaningful message, sometimes not having one at all. They then move onto chapter books, not noticeably meaningful enough, but it does take more dedication and thought to understand it. Finally, in the mid to late teenage years, comes the more rigorous and intellectual literature. These are books and novels written to provoke a more profound thought and interpretation. Commonly, authors push to convey a broader message. This can be done in several ways. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the acclaimed author of The Scarlet Letter, provides his broader themes and

    Read More

  • Divergent

    1043 Words  | 3 Pages

    A book that provides entertainment as well as life lessons is hard to come by in this day in age. The kind of books that should be on the summer reading list must have a large population appeal and deep character development that makes you feel like you are in the story. Veronica Roth’s book Divergent, which provides you with all the factors that make up good literature, should stay on the summer reading list. This book offers all these and more throughout its twists and turns. Divergent should stay on the summer reading list because of the life lessons taught in the story, the large population appeal and deep character development.

    Read More

  • Logical Contradictions Of Time Travel

    1451 Words  | 3 Pages

    First, we must determine what is meant by time and time travel. Time travelling, defined by David Lewis is as follows “Any traveler departs and arrives at his destination; the time elapsed from departure to arrival is the duration of the journey. But if he is a time traveler, the separation in time between departure and arrival does not equal the duration of his journey”1. Time can be discerned into two different meanings. One meaning of the word is universal time, which is experienced by everyone and everything that is not time travelling. The other, is a traveller’s personal time which is amount of time spent living regardless of when or where they are. If one does not time travel at all, then they will live and die with their personal time, constantly progressing parallel to the universal time (they live for 80 years and die 80 years after their birth). If one does time travel, and they travel 150 years into the past, then die there (and then),

    Read More

  • Time Management: Putting Time On Your Side

    2142 Words  | 5 Pages

    Time is life. It is irreversible and irreplaceable. To waste one’s time is to waste one’s life, but mastery of time usage is mastery of life and making the most of it. Einstein once said, “There is no absolute relation in time between two events, but there is an absolute relation between space and time” (Sharp 1). Time is a mystery. It cannot be tied down by definition or confined inside a formula. Like gravity, it is a phenomenon that we can experience but cannot understand. We are aware of the ageing of our bodies, of the effects of the movements of our planet, and of the ticking of the clock. We learn a little about what we call the past and we know that change is built into our lives. But neither philosophers nor scientists have been able to analyze and explain all of the meaning of time. Not only have they failed to provide easy explanations, but their efforts sometimes seem to have made mystery more mysterious and to have shown us that our lack of understanding was even greater than we supposed.

    Read More

  • Permutation of Letters

    803 Words  | 2 Pages

    Emma has 12 combinations and Lucy has 24. ½ of 24 = 12 so Emma has

    Read More

  • The Enigmatic Concept Of Time

    2122 Words  | 5 Pages

    We live a life of constants, the sun will rise, the seasons will change and time shall continue to flow. But everything is not what it seems. The sun is not really rising, as we perceive it to be. It is just our static position on the globe as we rotate, facing towards and away from the sun. The seasons are not changing, they are disappearing. Being replaced by their successor due to the Earth’s tilt, either leaning closer or further from the sun’s warmth and light. Such as these, time may be more intricate than was first believed.

    Read More

  • Power Of Reading In Sherman Alexie's Superman And Me

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lastly, being away from home has became my number one reason now why I read. Living here in United States for almost four years is like a roller coaster. There are times where I am up high and happy and there times that I feel down and alone. It takes time to cope up and feel that I really belong, that this is home now. Reading a book had helped me escape from reality. It became a pastime and entertainment for me. Whenever I read a book, I feel like I am in a different world where I can relate myself, I feel like I am a kid again, imagining scenarios that are happening in the book and I am in it

    Read More

  • Opposite Corners

    2031 Words  | 5 Pages

    will use 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, 6x6 and a 7x7 grid. I will do this to

    Read More

  • My Reading History

    520 Words  | 2 Pages

    If one were to look at my varied reading habits, they would be struck by the diversity and over all unusualness of my mind’s library. I hardly remember the plot of the first book I read, but it was called Lonesome Dove. It wasn’t the actual first book I read, but I don’t really count the McGregor Readers from kindergarten. I read it in first grade because of my Grandmother’s fascination in the T.V. mini-series that was playing during the time. I wanted to be able to talk to her about it so I went to the public library that weekend and picked up a copy. Well, I actually didn’t pick it up, it was too heavy. It took me over two and a half months to read, but with the help of a dictionary and my grandma, I finally read it from cover to cover. I can’t really say that I understood it, because I don’t recall what it was about. But I do remember that it was quite an ordeal. Since then I have read many books. I enjoy fiction the best, especially those that are based on society, but have a small twist that leads to an interesting story. Some of the stories that I remember best from that early time in my life are Tales from Wayside Elementary School, Hatchet, The Godfather, and The Giver. I think that Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, is the only book that I’ve read more than once. I liked the situation that Brian was put into, lost in the wilderness, with nothing more to fend for himself with than his mind and a trusty hatchet. The adversity he faces and his undying drive are what fascinated me most. Since that time my reading habits have grown into a different style. I have usually only read what was assigned to me during the school year because that was all I had time to do, but I have always strived to put forth extra effort. For example: last year for English 3 AP we had to read an excerpt from Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography. Although that we only had to read a small bit, I checked the entire book from the college library and read it all. Although the way that Franklin rambled on and on about his “Franklin Planner” was somewhat boring, the way he describe his life was pure poetry.

    Read More

  • Arranging Letters

    1800 Words  | 4 Pages

    So if we multiply 6 by 4, we would get 24, and we can get the total

    Read More

  • A Love Affair With Books

    520 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ever since I was a child, I've never liked reading. Every time I was told to read, I would just sleep or do something else instead. In "A Love Affair with Books" by Bernadete Piassa tells a story about her passion for reading books. Piassa demonstrates how reading books has influenced her life. Reading her story has given me a different perspective on books. It has showed me that not only are they words written on paper, they are also feelings and expressions.

    Read More

  • Permutations of Letters Experiment

    992 Words  | 2 Pages

    Permutations of Letters Experiment 1. Investigate the number of different permutations of the letters of the name Emma. I am trying to find the maximum number of possible permutations of the name EMMA. This name has four letters but only three variable letters E, M and A. Permutations: EMMA MMAE AEMM EMAM MMEA AMEM EAMM MAME AMME MAEM MEMA MEAM This shows us that there are twelve possible permutations of the letters of the name EMMA.

    Read More

More about Why I Read

Open Document