Tim Gillespie's Why Literature Matters

Many people believe literature is unnecessary; however, in Tim Gillespie’s article, Why Literature Matters, he points out that literature gives readers the opportunity to imagine themselves in someone else’s shoes. Through literature, people establish an important skill, empathy. While I do agree that literature can connect people through an empathetic imagination, that is not always the case. Stories can let readers gain knowledge of a character without building empathy, or they can also be written with bias, manipulating the reader's understanding of the information or a character. Gillespie claims that being able to understand a character's thoughts and emotions can build empathy; however, literature can reveal a person’s perspective without

In Jones’ perspective, the event was “an act of ‘revolutionary suicide’[...] the best testimony we can make is to leave this goddam world” (David Talbot, 202). However, from the perspective of his followers, they saw and heard “infants screaming and crying[...] the children begin their death throes--vomiting and bleeding through their noses and gasping for breath[...] dozens of people being dragged to the tub of purple-colored poison[...] about sixty adults were forcibly injected with the potion” (Talbot, 202). If Talbot only wrote about Jim Jones’ experience, I would have interpreted the deaths of all 913 members at Jonestown to be because of their unquestionable loyalty towards their leader; however, based on his followers’ experience, I now interpret their deaths as a result of a massacre. This reveals that different stories provide different interpretations of information, which can inform or misinform a reader. In a situation where both perspectives of an event are convincing, it can prevent readers from forming a clear interpretation or fully processing the information due to uncertainty. Gillespie believes that deeply analyzing a character will help readers build empathy; however, Gillespie fails to recognize that excessively analyzing a specific character creates bias which influences readers’ emotions. Gillespie claims that when the author “lacks feeling for the characters, it feels like manipulation to the reader, a lack of commitment, style without substance” (Gillespie, 19). For readers to truly connect with the characters, the author must have a strong relationship with those he writes about. This can be accomplished by understanding the person’s motives, hardships, complexities, backstory, and beliefs. However, because authors determine the connection between readers to characters, then authors can control the reader’s feelings towards certain characters if they only focus on