Lit and other things.

Nov 16, 2008 01:54


Now I truly wonder how much I have lost by refusing to invest any emotion in most things.

I've lost my emotional tastebuds, I've become almost fearful of letting myself become too attached or too involved in anything.

I began a minimalist reduction of all that needed passion in my life.

It's how I became as cynical and as disillusioned as I am today, and all that has happened hasn't changed a single thing.

It's the same for the A levels. I guess my subconscious wanted to avoid the near-hysterical levels of panic that I'd had to face in previous years, with rather drastic consequences on my physical health. The old me would have lost a good 5kg, and started getting stomach ailments 3 months before the As, at least.

That's the only justification I have for my total lack of interest in this exam.

Ironically, it is at this point that I realise, for the umpteenth time, how important literature is to me. While I really hate most of the texts and don't spend much effort on the subject (my constant B is rather indicative of this), it is one subject that has had the most impact on me throughout my school life. It has at the very least, made me a more discerning reader among other things.

Literature has taught me how to become human.

Studying texts has given me the ability to empathise with a whole spectrum of human emotion, ranging from the intense to the bland. The analysis of poems and prose puts the human condition under a microscope, and through that I am exposed to paradigms and emotions long before life puts me through them. Literature offers me a preview of heartbreak and happiness, and gives me the words I need to express them.

This may be less true for others, but the dramatic portrayal of Desdemona's pure but doomed love, and the despair of the O'Neils allows me a 3rd-person perspective into intense emotion that real life would otherwise not have enabled me to experience. It makes me less of a greenhorn when dealing with such feelings, and lets me achieve catharsis. Training myself to discern emotions and subtleties in poems - concentrated nuggets of language - gave me practice in harnessing such emotions in real life.

Sometimes, it prompts me to think about things that I would not have thought of, in ways that I would not have been drawn to otherwise. The Handmaid's Tale presented me with a hyperbolic condition of chauvinism and suppression, accompanied by subversion of religion. It made me rethink my stand on feminism, and the role of religion in shaping society. Pride and Prejudice was more typical, but did give some insight into the "sense and sensibilities" of the time. Lord of the Flies was a foray into the darkest point of humanity unrestrained, and forced me to consider briefly the extent to which our behaviour was managed indirectly by society.

Lastly, The Great Gatsby and Heart of Darkness gave me peace. Modern literature, unlike its predecessors, has departed from the convention of nicely resolved endings. Both texts concluded in a complex finality of mixed judgement, but the sense of resolution is unmistakable in either. The Byronic hero, as well as the tragic hero, had become commonplace, when for the first time society at large began to accept and celebrate a flawed individual. Kurtz and Gatsby do not redeem themselves in the way that Othello does; rather their greatness is salvation in itself. In the heart of each novel (pardon the pun) lies an amalgamation of despite and awe, yet the reader is made to understand, unambiguously, that there is no solution to the yin-yang hodgepodge of values that make up the status quo. Gatsby's shady dealings and vulgar personality coexists with his gargantuan capacity for imagination and warmth, while Kurtz's eloquence and larger-than-life vision more than compensated for his cruelty and "methods".

In the Modern world, as in real life, shades of grey dominate. Unlike Macbeth, who is dealt justice at the hands of MacDuff, or Othello who realigns himself with righteousness through death, Modern literature is happy to find closure through compromise, and it is by accepting and understanding the inevitability of such bleakness that one is able to reach a state of peace. As such, it is fitting that these are the last texts of our Literature journey. Compared to the hot-blooded anti-slavery cries of To Kill a Mockingbird, and heart-wrenching tale of Romeo and Juliet, with which we were inducted into this discipline, these texts that mark the end of our formal study of Literature are indeed well-picked, to give us a fitting send-off into the real world.

Here is a poem I wrote, just to rebutt Cambridge's insistence on Freudian analysis of everything.

it is the call
that has us perked, on our toes
Ears pressed to walls listening

for strained whisps of words

as the air grows tart and thick and taut
with each whirr and hiss

a click has us scrambling -
shirts hurriedly smoothed

back to our desks
glazed with a sheen of
blank, daily languor

It doesn't mean a thing. I am just trying to distill the moment in a few lines. It's tiring to write political satire or deeply emotional verse all the time.

poetry

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