Literature has given humans the ability to express history, ideas, tell stories, publish philosophy, question society and examine laws, rules and government. We can learn from the literature of other cultures as well as our own, from other people who think differently than we do and plumb the depths of our own emotion with evocative stories and poems.
Literature from the past has even given us archetypes to use in modern writing, such as the flawed hero, the quest, defiance of the gods and personalizing the story of the rise and fall of civilizations.
Literature has given voice to love, longing and the sorrow of losing someone. It can even describe the trials and triumph of a baseball player like Roy Hobbs, in The Natural.
One of my favorite pieces of literature, John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga, deals with the three generations of wealthy Londoners from the 1880’s to 1930, following the tragic story of a man of property, his beautiful wife and how his lust for her and her revulsion of him affects the whole family and even the lives of their children by second marriages and other relatives. Aside from the mistakes and blows of fate, we get an intimate portrait of daily life in Victorian and Edwardian London. Galsworthy was an early Feminist writer whose works influenced many others and showed the darker side of marriage and property.
