Reading and Writing in a Digital Age

One of my favorite quotes can be found in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake. This was the last book we read in English to close up my senior year and I very clearly remember reading this specific quote it in my Psych class, (because who pays attention to that shenanigans anyway) and getting choked up. My journey as a Stanner was coming to an end. I couldn’t help but reflect on all the triumphs and failures, laughter and tears, all the memories that I had created with people that became my family over four years at Molloy. I was growing up, I was leaving everything I knew and venturing into foreign territory. It was everything I was desperately trying to avoid thinking of as the numbers on the ‘last day of school’ countdown got smaller and smaller. All of this came to memory when I read the following line:

“Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.”

It’s simple, nothing crazy, but enough to evoke an emotional response. I find that it means different things to different people. It’s meaning changes depending on the circumstance as well. I read this book again over the summer while I was on a service trip, on a bus ride upstate, on the beach and every time I came across it, it meant something different to me. The power of these words to take on new meaning each and every time I read them, is amazing.

One of my favorite authors is Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. It is hard for me to pinpoint my favorite quote because every sentence he writes is so brilliantly crafted. But, I have to choose just one. So here is one passage I find particularly beautiful and moving from A Thousand Splendid Suns:

Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, and unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings. (p. 329)

The author’s use of pathos here is gorgeous and heart wrenching at the same time. The author employs thoughtful retrospection, a metaphor, and short, blunt sentences to play on the reader’s emotion. The author also uses culturally appropriate words- like harami– throughout the novel to establish ethos. I read and re-read this passage, and I couldn’t find one superfluous or out-of-place word. I think Hosseini’s writing is the epitome of what good writing should be- clear, clutter-free, engaging, beautiful, and emotional.