Reality In Literature

Reality is not a question of choice. And no matter how fancy or let’s face it: cool, might be the time and the place we are stuck in (keyword might), imagination always has something more to offer us. It seems that there is always something beyond the horizon, beyond the sunset, beyond our reality and beyond our lives. Something bigger, but at the same time smaller. A whole new world, or age, even. It is greater than us, it is even greater than what we ever dared to think, but perfectly fits in a stack of paper. This is literature. Unlike the common understanding that it is the most agreeable way of ignoring life, however, this essay will illustrate just the opposite. Because we write not to forget, but to remember and we read not to escape,

While reading we are constantly encounter fictional characters and events that seemingly may have nothing to do with reality, but still have a real-life prototype. In this sense, it is impossible to ignore life while reading about someone else’s one. It is impossible to ignore the problems of today 's consumer society while reading about the materialism and negligence in the 1920s. Thus, literature reveals for us what we otherwise fail to notice or understand whatsoever, namely, the cyclicity of life. It help us see what it was back then, what is it now, and for good or bad, what it might have been if...! Describing just those three dimensions of time and countless such of space automatically leads to the question: okay, so what? Now what? The bridge between “their” world - the fictional, the far-away, the unknown, and ours is already there. One will go over it many times throughout the book, or the poem, or the play, or anything they are reading. Back and forth. Comparing and analyzing. Finding that one friend who is always daydreaming and always “stretches out his arms toward the dark” (Fitzgerald 20), toward the “green light” (Fitzgerald 21), even when fog has fallen over. Or seeing the mad eyes of Macbeth - eyes of a sinful tyrant, in the president of one’s home country. We see those same patterns that have passed the test of time only to repeat over and over again. Looking at them from a different angle, however, we are now able to see previously hidden strengths and flaws - qualities, which will determine our course from now: to either preserve or change that