Just a Quote

This is something I read recently and I went, “Yes!”  It relates to my previous post “Why I Don’t Like Literature Class.”  Stephenie Meyer, author of The Twilight Saga and The Host: “When I write stories, they’re very specific—it’s about this one situation, and one person who’s not like anybody else in the world.  So that person’s decisions and choices are not a model for anyone else.  And it bothers me when people say: Well, this story is preaching this, or the moral is this.  Because it’s just a story.  It’s about an interesting circumstance and how it resolves.  It’s not intended to mean anything for anybody else’s life….This is a fictional account—I wasn’t trying to teach anyone anything—I just wanted to entertain myself.”

Why I Don't Like Literature Class

           Literature is not something to be pondered or mulled over or picked apart.  It is something to be read and enjoyed and accepted.  Is he a believable character?  Was she justified?  How might this have been different?  

            This isn’t real life!  In a fictional story, we don’t need to pick these things apart.  We need to read it, enjoy it, and take it at face value.  Literature is not created to make sense; it is created to stir emotion in the heart of the reader.

            When a writer sits down with passion in his heart and fire in his eyes and he puts his pen to paper and pours out eloquent words to capture the feelings he feels, he is not intending for the one who comes across his words to point out the inadequacies or inconsistencies.  He intends the reader to feel what he feels and see what he sees.  When he describes a scene, he doesn’t want you to ask, “Is this realistic?” or “What does this say about the narrator?”  He wants you to visualize it and feel the cool air and hear the gentle music. 

            Art appeals to the heart—to the emotions.  If we wanted it all to match up, we would study math, not literature.  The beauty of fiction is that it doesn’t have to make sense; it just has to be beautiful.  A writer has succeeded if it is beautiful and if it makes the reader want to keep reading.  Let us stop studying literature to the point of destruction and let it be what it was meant to be.