How I Got to Like Literature
How I learned to appreciate literature while growing up as a child in Arkansas. I ofter sat on the porch around uncles and aunts who told tales about ghosts, interesting people, and animal. These tales were my introduction to literature.
Although I didn’t know what the term literature meant as a young toddler, I can remember that I was always fascinated by it throughout life. I can remember sitting on many squeaky wooded porches on hot southern nights in Arkansas while my parents, grandparents, and uncles and aunts took turns telling tales of ghost and strange sounds in and around the houses. I didn’t know this was oral literature or grand conversations.
The grand conversations turned into interest in words and symbols before I entered first grade. I could read numbers and some words such as “the” and “she” and “he”. I could also recognize cowboys and girls on television (The Wild Wild West). “Draw your gun” and “Fast Draw” are some of the phases I understood before school.
In first grade, I fell in love with reading small books featuring such phrases as “run spot run” or see spot run”. I also loved nursery rhymes such as “little boy blue” or “row, row, row your boat.” Between the years of 7 and 12 I read literature such as” The Cat and the hat” and Green Eggs and Ham. I continued with Charlotte’s Web and the Five Chinese Brothers. It was interested to actually feel the characters and their stories as if I was with them.
As my fondness with literature grew, I had a tendency toward adventure in literature. I would lose myself in such books as Tow Sawyer and Hunker berry Finn, and Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twin. Not only would I lose myself in such books I would also find aspects of myself. The joy of adventure for a growing kid is amazing. The world belongs to him.
I begin to see the broader picture in literature while reading such plays as the Glass Menagerie and novels like Babbitt. I begin to see the challenges as well as the ups and downs of life. Plays like Hamlet and Macbeth makes one think beyond one’s self. Life is more than about you. You begin to see the drama each individual plays on the “stage “of the world. At this point, I begin to appreciate literature as a very fascinating art, an art that could affect individual and global thought. It helps us feel what life was in the past and what life is now. Therefore, to feel life in literature goes far beyond a mere knowledge of literature: it offers us a vicarious experience.
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