Why I think English is important.

It's funny. I'm one of the biggest promoters of English that I know, yet I don't think I'm going to take it at university.

Why? Because I'm lazy. But also because you don't need someone to tell you what the symbols in texts mean. Once you've done a high school level of it, you really can figure all this stuff out on your own.

But why is English important? I hear you ask. Perhaps you are even scathingly throwing me the old "English teaches you how to think" line in a very sarcastic manner. Don't worry, I'm the first to disagree with that. How can you be taught how to think? It's a rather ridiculous notion. I do, however, like to argue that English teaches you how to ask questions.

And I do believe that English makes you a better person. This is a short list of why:

1) English helps you to understand other people.
The reason we can never fully understand another person, no matter how hard we try is because we cannot live inside their heads. It is impossible to hear every single thought that runs through their mind, even if they do have a Twitter account.

Yet books allow us to do exactly that - get into another persons head. When we read books, especially first person books, it allows us to see the innermost workings of the narrators mind. We see how they see, feel how they feel and think like they do. Books allow us to access another person's mind and gives us another perspective on the world. It brings us out of our own head and opens us up to another person's emotions.

Take "The curious incident of the dog in the night-time" for instance, where the main character has Aspergers. People without Aspergers cannot even begin to understand what it must be like to have that condition but by reading about it, we gain insight and understanding into other people's lives. Same can be said for Khaled Hosseini's "The Kite Runner", which is set in Afghanistan to the purpose of trying to dispel the notion that all Muslims are extremists.

It's only when we gain perspective into other people, that we can accept that people think and feel in the same way as we do.

2) Books provide insights into the past.
Let's face it. We will never know what it's like to be citizens of Ancient Rome. We will (hopefully) never know what it's like to be alive during WWII and as we move further and further into the future, we will forget more and more of what the past generations were like.

Hell, I can't even remember a world without internet!

When we lose our perspective on historical events, we forget what the past teachers us. How can we learn from our mistakes if do do not remember them?

"The book thief" is a classic example. It's about a young German girl growing up in suburban Germany. It's an unusual premise for a holocaust book, but, to me at least, it made me think about how the Nazi's were people too, how a lot of them were just doing what they had to do to survive.

This does undoubtedly tie back into my first point, but I do feel that the Holocaust has received the Hollywood treatment far too much. There's no sense of how personal it was, how it affected the whole world.

Literature can also be a direct response to world events and can tell you a lot more about how the world was feeling at that time, rather than some text book.

Like this:

This is the cover for the 9/11 Spiderman comic. I dare you to read this and say that a text book has a bigger emotional feel than any recent textbook. This issue was released right after the attack and was created by the writers, most of who lived in New York.

You know things are bad when even Spiderman, defender of NY has no answers for you.

3) English teaches us valuable lessons.
You know how when you read children's books, there's always a message in them for the children like "don't lie" or "look both ways before crossing the road"? Well big kid books, and adult books do the same thing.

"The Chronicles of Narnia" Teaches kids about many things, bravery, loyalty, honestly. In "Voyage of the Dawntreader" (my favourite) I still remember how Eustace was turned into a dragon because of his greed.

In more 'adult' books, "Blue Moon Rising" had a great deal of being yourself and triumphing over a world that wanted to crush you by being yourself. Rupert received his heart's desire, which in the end, turned out not to be money or authority, but a way to defeat the darkness.

Even in non-fantasy books, the Great Gatsby teaches us about the folly of money, and how it really does not buy us happiness.

And to draw it up to my favourite saying, we learn all these things by asking questions. If we do not ask ourselves why it is wrong for Amir to sacrifice Hassan, we will never realise why it is wrong. If we do not examine  why Holden Caulfield wears the red hunting hat, we will never know that it's the same colour as his dead brother's hair so he uses it as a security blanket, hoping that if he can keep the hat by him, he can keep his brother alive and stay in that little place of innocence.