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• Literature sharpens the mind, it encourages the suppleness of mind. Literature stimulates
thoughts about issues, ideas, e.t.c.
• Literature helps us to interpret our own experiences
• Literature teaches about human nature. Writers teach us about human nature
perhaps more than psychologists. These are writers like Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare and Ibsen.
E. M. Forster speaks of the very limited number of persons whose inner life and
motivations we know, and sees it as the great service of the novel that it does reveal the
introspective life of the characters.
• Literature relieves us from the pressure of emotions. To express emotions is to get free of them. Githongo wrote to relieve himself of emotions of betrayal. The reader of a novel
is said to experience release and relief.
• Literature is for personal development of the Individual, It is for mental growth
• Literature is used for entertainment. Since the invention of language, men have taken pleasure in following and participating in the imaginary adventures and imaginary experiences of imaginary people. Literature serves to make life less tedious, to make the hours pass more quickly and pleasurably. This is the first justification of reading literature.
• Literature increases our ability to understand our society. The bragging soldier, the miser, the spendthrift and romantic son, the confidential servant.
• Literature nourishes our emotional lives. The inner life that good writers reveal in their characters often gives us glimpses of some portion of ourselves. We can be moved to laugh, cry, tremble, dream, ponder, shriek, or rage with a character by simply turning a page instead of turning our lives upside down. Native Son by Richard Wright. Bigger Thomas.
• Literature broadens our perspectives on the world. Most of what we can see in our lifetimes is astonishingly limited. Literature allows us to move beyond the boundaries of our own lives and culture and into other people’s lives and culture. Literature makes us more aware of life's possibilities, subtleties and ambiguities. People who read literature experience more life and have a keener sense of common human identity than those who do not.
NatalieR answered the question on June 13, 2022 at 10:15