APATHY
EMPATHY
These are the three emotions that I describe at the start of a literature class, regardless of the story or whether my students speak English as a first or second language. We explore and define the Greek root PATHOS: an appeal to emotions. Originally this word meant suffering. Today it is a root of many English words that describe our connection or lack of connection to the suffering or other strong emotions of others.
Next we talk about the characters and situations that we identify with and those that we don't care about at all. We talk about the author's writing style and point of view and how it has affected us--or not. We do assignments and analysis that are based on the text alone, and then we reach beyond to see what lessons, if any, we can apply to our own lives.
Some students enjoy the process, some students hate it, and many don't see the point beyond getting the AP English credits that will impress a college admissions board. Many, even those who enjoy reading, wonder if there are better ways to spend their time.
So....why read fiction?
I tailor my answer to the student. For me, reading fiction comes as naturally as breathing or sleeping, so it is really hard to break down the reasons for doing it. I couldn't live without fiction. But apparently many many people can take it or leave it.
Neil Gaiman, a prolific author best known for his science fiction and fantasy writing (popular with readers of all ages) offers the best overall explanation I have seen so far. It comes from his anthology called The View From the Cheap Seats. This explanation will resonate with some of my students and will fly over the heads of others. But if you are taking the time to read this blog, I think you will like it.
Here's Neil: Literate people read fiction, and fiction has two uses. Firstly, it's a gateway drug to reading. The drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even if its hard, because someone's in trouble and you have to know how it's all going to end...that is a very real drive. And it forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going. To discover that reading per se is pleasurable. .. The second thing that fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film. you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation markers, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world, and people in it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You're being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you're going to be slightly changed...You're also finding out something as you read that will be vitally important for making your way in the world. And it's this: THE WORLD DOESN"T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS. THINGS CAN BE DIFFERENT.
This last sentence has become a mantra here in Silicon Valley where everyone wants to change the world. Small wonder many of our company founders are science fiction fans. But look into the heart of many a lawyer, at least of my generation, and they will tell you that they were inspired by the noble Atticus Finch Esq. in Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird. Stanford physician Abraham Verghese is now a full time author and National Humanities medal winner. He has inspired many with both fictional and nonfiction accounts of the challenges of practicing patient-centered medicine. His first novel about medicine was Cutting For Stone written in 2009.
Steve Jobs read a lot of fiction. In fact, he told his biographer Walter Isaacson that in the last two years of high school he explored Shakespeare and Plato and Melville. Click here to see some of his reading list.
Throughout his life he read widely on subjects within and beyond the realm of technology.
But I knew that even before I read the Isaacson book.
Here's the proof:
