Literature Reflection

After completing my project, I realize that literature has the power to give people a perspective that they have never considered before. The question two questions I posed in my Literature Philosophy, “What contribution are you making to the world?” and “What impact will that impact make?”, although they are self-answered questions, those questions can be answered with the perspective of others in mind. These perspectives can come from the people we know in our lives or characters in literature. These people and characters have different contributions to make to our identities and how we view the world. In other words, although we answer this question through our own point of view, other people and characters offer their point of view that have the power to contribute to how we view the world.

This is what literature does; it gives us a character different from ourselves who may have a different perspective than we have and shows how we can learn from that character to embed that character’s identity in our own. Even if the audience disagrees with the character’s perspective, they can take what is good about that character’s perspective and incorporate it into their own view of the world or identity. What if the audience disagrees with the perspective of the character entirely? Although I find this scenario very rare, that teaches us how we should not view the world or what we should not be. This causes the audience to think about why the perspective is wrong in their minds, and think and live differently from the character. Therefore, literature gives us a perspective that we may have never been exposed to before, and gives us a lesson to learn from a character who is different from the audience.

What if the character views the world similarly to that of the audience? The audience is not learning as much about a difference in perspective across different people. However, the audience may get a new perspective about an experience the character goes through that is similar to their own. They may learn why an event in their life happened the way it did. In other words, they may gain a new perspective from what happened in a given situation and reflect on that situation differently. Just because someone is similar to us does not necessarily mean we all view the world in the same way. What one person has to say about a given situation may differ from another person’s perspectives. We can learn from each other’s perspective and evaluate what we consider to be make sense to us and what is still ambiguous to us about that perspective.

Degree Reflection

As I said in my introduction, I chose to major in English because it is easy to find meaning in literature whether one reads it inside or outside the classroom. However, when I chose to major in English, I chose to read; view; and listen to more literature than I would expose myself to outside the classroom alone. Thus, I learned more lessons about the world than I would have by just simply reading outside the classroom. Therefore, I have so many values to instill into my students than I would if I were not an English major. I will use my English degree to teach my students the values I have learned myself in literature. I will find pieces of literature that teach the same values I learned while majoring in English at Rutgers. Although the story will be different, and perhaps the perspective, the lessons I have learned in literature will hopefully still be there.

How will I incorporate these values as a guidance counselor? One value books offer for children is to see themselves in books and learn about their experiences through particular themes. Although I will not be able to teach students about these books for a grade, I will be able to use themes in various pieces of literature to help them through their struggle. When I become a guidance counselor, I will hopefully be able to incorporate a bibliotherapy. When I took my Literature of Childhood class at Rutgers Camden, I learned about this concept in which they help students through struggles using literature. In other words, it is “healing through books”. I want to be able to implement a bibliotherapy to help students see their struggle through another perspective, and I want the students to be able to learn a key, “take-away” lesson to help them overcome their struggle. The struggle may be hard, but literature can help teach students about these struggles. Therefore, I want my students to be able find meaning in their lives through the use of literature inside and outside the classroom, just like I have.