Literature, art, music, television series, film that endures through time and space

— Anonymous

From my perspective, “great” work, either literature, art, music, television series, film, etc. is something that endures through time and space. Great Works for me is like the author records his or her thoughts in a way that is accessible to me, the reader. When appreciating the Great Works, at different life stages, my feelings are different. When I was young, I only focused on the story itself, regardless of the social context or the background of the author. When I grow older, I always intentionally search for the culture background while or after reading the story. It gives me an inside look into how customs from other parts of the world differ from my own country.

This semester, I took English Literature 2850. The materials in the course that I am required to read vastly expand my horizons. I read stories and appreciate poetries of various authors in the past and from different parts of the world. Sometimes we do appreciation of poetries of authors living in the same centuries but experiencing opposite social contexts, which also shapes their creation styles. I just feel that literature opens me a window into the past, opens me a window to see the rest of the world’s culture, allowing me to see how my ancestors and others dealt with their day-to-day life, overcome obstacles and struggles when under oppression.

I am really interested in the authentic expression of difficulties people encounter in the past and how people deal with it. Nowadays, people’s life seems to be easier and diverse, but I still believe that people are suffering in their own way no matter how the economy advances and the society develops itself. Therefore, I do love stories or fictions that reveal people’s daily life, especially the life of people that seems distant from the life of mine, from which I gain access to the other people’s emotion and their desire. The story I read in this semester that I love most is Sonny’s Blues, which is the story about Black people’s life in Harlem. The story is full of conflicts, struggles, reconciliation and love. I am from Asia, so in my country, there is no such conflicts between people of different colors. The social struggles that people under racism pressure experience are not that obvious too. However, from this story, even the social context is so distant from my life, it is not hard for me to be closer to the characters in the book and to feel what the other people feel through the emotional descriptions in the book, which enable me to make connections between themes of the book and my life. Through the story, I get a chance to appeal the real life.

In this semester, I was also amazed by my classmates’ thoughts expressed during the class. Taking the course, I was exposed to people’s different ideas. This was the first time I got to know how different people’s thoughts were. Sometimes, me and my classmate sitting next to me held opposite ideas. The collision of thoughts was so amazing that I suddenly realized that we were so different. My classmates and I are from different countries with diverse cultural backgrounds. And our thoughts are shaped by what we encounter every day, the people we meet and the life we lead. This is also what I feel literature contributes to. Literature comes from life. When we read it, part of the book blends into our lives. we end up with different ideas and then we share the ideas with others. In the end, we more understand our lives and people around us. That’s the power of literature.