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How and why is literature better than life

Before answering this question we need actually to know the


relationship between the two. Is literature merely a mirror of reality?
If so, then we will not need literature because reality already exists
without it. Actually literature represents and does not copy life, it
portrays life in a new way by reshaping, reforming, or recreating it
to a fictional one where everything has nothing to do with reality.
There is no reality in literature since it is a separate world by its own
.found only in the head of the author

Unlike science, literature satisfies the elite minds by


answering why-questions which are rarely asked by normal people.
They are usually asked by philosophers and children, however,
literature stimulates these kinds of questions in ordinary minds
which results in taking them to a higher level of realization. So many
roles literature has played throughout the history of human kind,
.and those roles at many times proved to be better than life itself

People have always felt the dryness of their reality and sought
for a soul to rain that dryness. Literature along with holy books have
had fulfilled that need to the transcendent. There are many
questions in the human minds about destiny, love, life, death,
justice and so on, and if there are no explanation of these questions,
this could lead it to a state of imbalance and desperation. Actually,
literature help to better perceive the diversity of the human world
.and what is beyond

In real life, a person sees things from one level, his own; things
which are shorter than his eye level will be considered short, and
things which are bigger than his own size will be considered big and
the list goes on. Things he cannot see however will not be admitted,
or at least cared for. Literature provides us with a whole view of
things; every aspect is under one's eyes: places, times, characters,
events, motives, and passions are all an open book to the reader of
literature who is elevated to a higher level of realization and
sensitivity enabling him to apply this newly-gained intellectual
maturity to his own real life. Generally, good literature provides its
faithful readers with new intellectual and perceptual tools to help
.them do better in their lives

This multi-dimension fictional world does not only help in


perceiving the world better, but also in preserving facts and
knowledge of certain geography and certain history. Sometimes
when scholars want to know about certain details of specific culture,
they go to the literary texts written in the specific time and place
they want to study. For example if we want to study some social
issues like child employment in the 19th century, we cannot neglect
the richness of information found in the novels of Charles Dickens,
which illustrates and portray that issue not as science does, but by
.transferring that world into a multi-dimension world called fiction

Not only a stimulating power to the mind, and a container of


human knowledge and experience, literature has proved to be an
unparallel source of inspiration since the dawn of humanity. If a
literary work helped to draw the attention to some overlooked truths
about our reality, and stimulated our innate human sympathy, this
can lead to a revolution of thought which by its part can develop
into a national revolution. In her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet B.
Stowe succeeded in delivering her message of the evils of slavery to
hundreds of thousands of people who already were skeptical of
slavery's legality. This novel along with other factors led to the
American Civil War which ultimately changed the face of history.
When reality becomes the part that imitates literature like the case
above, we know that literature is better than life because it plants in
.the seeds for change in the real world

So life can be the one to imitate literature, and this can actually
be true if we come to the question of who precedes who? If we let
go of our imagination to draw the whole scene from the very
beginning, we will notice that everything that exists in the real world
existed in the mind before. When someone decides to build a house,
he does not go and start the work without first having a mental
picture of it; how the doors will be, which location is the best, what
shape and color should it be, and other kinds of mental images. And
this is what we call literature, the state that precedes reality and
.helps in shaping it

As human beings, we spend most if not all our time in that


fictional world, even at sleeping the unconscious mind keeps on
working and sending us messages through dreams. This non-stop
process of ideas, images and fancies crossing our minds is what we
call: our private literature, where we analyze, hypothesize, assume,
and foreshadow all that matters to us. So we do have literature
inside all of us, and this is why we feel sometimes bonded with
some literary texts because this outspoken literature will be united
with our inner literature causing an orgasmic moment of mental
.pleasure

Sometimes, when a person feels desperate or surrounded, he


would dream to escape to a better place than this life he is living.
Literature would make the perfect choice because the reader will
only monitor and will not be part of the conflict and plot himself.
This kind of monitoring things without getting into trouble helps the
reader in concentrating on the unconscious and conscious process
of learning, which ultimately leads to pleasure, and pleasure that
.springs out from learning is the most elevated kind of pleasure

By Ghada Al Bedairi

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