Why Literatura by Mario Vargas Summury Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Why Literatura by Mario Vargas Summury - Essay Example In a recent survey organized in Spain, it was revealed that half of that country's population has never read a book.2 Llosa argues that literature is more than just a luxury pastime, but that instead literature is a primary and necessary undertaking of the mind.3 In addition, he basically says that literature is the mode through which humans learn to understand each other. By reading such literary greats as Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, and Tolstoy, our lives are enriched because we find that there is an equanimity in such works that transcend prejudice, race, religion, political sectarianism, and exclusivist nationalism.4 Secondly, Llosa says that the works brought forth in literature are a body of knowledge in the life of the learner. "In today's world, this totalizing and living knowledge of a human being may be found only in literature."5 This is knowledge to which everyone can relate. Fiction exists in order to serve a greater purpose besides the other branches of the humanities, such as philosophy, history, the arts, or the social sciences, and that is to "enrich through the imagination the entirety of human life, which cannot be dismembered, disarticulated, or reduced to a series of schemas or formulas without disappearing."6 Literature, Llosa says, is a "link" that establishes dialogue amongst human beings. Llosa notes that Marcel Proust observed that "real life, at last enlightened and revealed, the only life fully lived, is literature."7 What is meant by that is that literature is a shared task, and that because of it our lives are enriched. This enrichment brings us to different realms, tra nsporting us to various eras. Texts allow us to have dreams of our own. As Llosa says, "The feeling of membership in the collective human experience across time and space is the highest achievement of culture, and nothing contributes more to its renewal in every generation than literature."8 A body of literary works form the basis for our humanity. According to Llosa, a community without language suffers: "A community without a written literature expresses itself with less precision, with less richness of nuance, and with less clarity than a community whose principal instrument of communication, the word, has been cultivated and perfected by means of literary texts."9 A world with a lack of literacy assumes communication problems due to "crude and rudimentary language," and worse, there is the idea that the person will not be able to express himself or herself due to a limited vocabulary.10 Worse than that, there is the thought that these people without the language to communicate or the literature to help them do so are at a loss, and therefore are stuck with poverty of thought,11 or a poor imagination. Third, Llosa argues that reading literature is an irreplaceable activity for the formation of citizens in a modern and democratic society. Since "all good literature is radical, and poses radical questions about the world in which we live,"12 one would be hard-pressed not to agree with Llosa on this point. Llosa reminds us that a "free and democratic society must have responsible and critical citizens conscious of the need continuously to examine the world that