—Anonymous
The first time I read this poem, I was attracted by that. Instead of talking about beauty, it talks about ugliness. I read this poem before my desk at home which place can make me calm and really think of something. Therefore, when I saw the unfamiliar vocabulary, I didn’t feel anxious and I had enough time and patience to check that in the dictionary so that I have a relatively full and deep understanding about this poem. The reason why I would like call “To the Reader” a great work is that it’s meaningful and talking about some realities. It’s not about an individual’s love and affection or someone’s miserable experience but it’s about the nature of human, of all of us. When I read the first half part, I felt touched but I didn’t feel that this poem is very exceptional because lots of poems talk about greed and bad qualities of human. However, when I read the last half part, it surprised me. He did not only mention about the greed or desire, but also talk about the reason of greed which is boredom. Boredom is the real key to my mental house because it connects to my life. I started to introspect and rethink of what I did and what I thought of before. Every time when I bought something, I would feel very excited and too impatient to wait for its arrival, but after I received that and got familiar with that, I would lose the feeling of excitement and sometimes I even fell into the felling of disappointment or boredom. Therefore, I kept buying and looking for new items which never appeared in my life before. I didn’t know what’s right or what’s wrong and I just want to earn more and buy more. After I read this poem, I found that’s a pitfall of life. We always get bored with the physical items like television, computer, video games etc. because they are finite and are useful to some limited extent. The reason why a person who buys one video game will buy the next video game is that he has done that game and he can’t extract any more enjoyment from that. Desire is infinite. I start to think what’s infinite. Is that art, literature or something more mental? I don’t think so. I have tried many kinds of instruments like saxophone, flute and etc., but I will still have the feeling of boredom. When I finish reading one book, I still want to read another one. What’s infinite? In my opinion, the desire of human to pursue wonderful life is infinite. Not all desires are bad because human is driven by their desires. Some desires like killing and arson are bad because it’s built on the badness of someone or something. As for the normal desires, we can’t say they are good or bad but we can judge the way to pursue it. If someone used bad ways to pursue property, it would be bad, but if someone used their intelligence or sweat to earn their deserving money, it would be great. We can’t stop our desires and we don’t have to stop it. The only thing we should do is using the right method to get what we want and this is the reason why the law exists. Everyone is the reader and don’t be afraid to be the reader.
