Preview

Escapism Vs Book

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
870 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Escapism Vs Book
Books are a great way to escape the troubles of the world and find a world in which you feel you belong, and they can also enhance our knowledge and feelings of belonging in the real world. Novels also fall into a category of pop culture, leading to conformity, both in good and bad ways. Books are create emotions in people unlike any other and these emotions help bring people together. Reading novels enhances both our understandings and feelings of belonging in society.
Escapism is when a person turns to something more enjoyable and more pleasurable to get away from the harsh realities of the real world. Escapism is natural and healthy, allowing people not to be immersed in a world of depression. Krystal (2012) believes that fans of the fantasy
…show more content…
People hear that there is a hit movie coming out in the next year, and it’s based on a book, so of course they read the book before anyone else, just to try and get ahead. Ask them about their interpretations of the book, and they probably wouldn’t be able to tell you, as this isn’t why they read it. As Murakami (1987) said, “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” This quotation isn’t all about conforming, it’s also about not conforming, and how reading books that suit the individual can augment that individuality and also their scope of …show more content…
I’d heartily recommend a box of tissues if you were to read Bridge to Terabithia (Paterson, 1977), Les Misérables (Hugo, 1862) or any of the Harry Potter series (Rowling, 1997-2007), because you will need them. They aren’t all sad though, books can make people feel great, and many people turn to reading them when they get down. These books enhance our own emotions and can make us feel emotions that aren’t possible in our own lives. Novels can also conjure empathy. A well written book will make it out as if the reader actually experienced the events, not just read them on paper. This allows people to connect with each other when these situations happen in real life. While one may have never lost someone close to them, after reading a few novels where this happened, they can begin to sympathise and empathise with the person feeling those emotions. Fiction novels are great tools when it comes to harnessing a sense of belonging, allowing us to feel things we have never felt before, learn things we would never have otherwise, and escape to a world never thought possible.
Krystal, A. 2012, A Critic at Large, “Easy Writers,” The New Yorker, May 28, 2012, p. 81

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Books are precious pieces that improve one’s knowledge and help define one’s personality by relating themselves to characters within the text. As Vladimir Nabokov said in Good Readers and Good Writers “The reader should identify himself or herself with the hero or heroine.”(Nabokov, 973) I always believed that by reading a book you become one with yourself by somehow feeling all the problems of the characters and become completely absorbed in their world, therefore feeling like you have a purpose as you read.…

    • 1148 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Did you know that fiction books make you sympathize others? That’s because when you read, you go on an “adventure” alongside the characters and gradually relate to them. To achieve the effects, you must have a deep understanding of the characters’ personalities, thinking, backgrounds, attitudes, and more.…

    • 686 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Reading is something Society has grown a custom too but just think what our Society would be like if there were no books allowed. In Fahrenheit 451 By: Ray Bradbury books are illegal. If anyone gets caught with a book Captain Beatty and his crew will try to burn everything they can get there hands on. In the book Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury illustrates how books affect how people act towards other, and how they start to ponder their decisions in life.…

    • 450 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Authors can summon powerful feelings out of readers with their books. That is why an author can easily advance their causes, beliefs, and ideology with their works. Literature, books especially, can really have a potent effect on readers.…

    • 581 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Escapism In Siddhartha

    • 501 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Escapism has existed ever since the hypothalamus developed inside the human brain. Its four functions have kept us alive as a species, managing fight, flight, food, and sex. But when that flight manifests itself in interpersonal relationships, in spirituality, in attempts to avoid the unavoidable, things start to fall apart. In Siddhartha, by Hermann Hess, escapism is just one more untruth for Siddhartha to overcome.…

    • 501 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Books can cast a strange spell over you. It’s the intimacy of being let into such details of a character’s feelings and being that draws you to read The fluency of the writing and the drama, heroism, and intrigue exhibited by the characters can almost be too much for a person. The pure power of literature sometimes wont allow you to set the book aside and leave the characters life. The attraction and attachment of humans to fictional characters through reading is seen in the poem “The Reader” by Richard Wilbur and an excerpt from the short story “A General in the Library” by Italo Calvino.…

    • 375 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Tomcat In Love

    • 1466 Words
    • 6 Pages

    “The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear ducts and the nape of the neck and to make a person feel something about the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human”(Tim O’Brien).…

    • 1466 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” (Lee, 39). Authors have the power to show us others point of view, they can put us in their shoes. Literature teaches empathy, gives us a deeper look at things. To Kill a Mockingbird and “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon” shows us things very differently than what we initially thought it would was. Things aren’t always what they seem, the truth is mostly being overshadowed by what others want it to be.…

    • 613 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Its because fictional stories can have a powerful effect on us in the way that they entertain and engage, inform and provoke us to reflect on the real world.…

    • 1709 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    mice and men

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages

    People use books as their own personal comfort, or escape from the realms of the real world. To read about pain, or real life tragedy would be contradicting.…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Critical Lens

    • 638 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Anne Lamott said, “Good literature substitutes for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through.” Good literature allows individuals to live through events which they have not encountered in their lives. I agree with this quote because I believe it is true. This quote is shown to be true through the books, Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens and Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. In both pieces of literature, characters had an experience which we haven’t had or been through. Books help us understand the situations that we haven’t faced yet.…

    • 638 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    R. Martin once said, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” Literature develops the imagination and gives everyone a chance to live many different lives. While reading, anyone can step out of their own skin and into someone else’s for a while. It gives the mind wings, so that even those who are physically grounded can fly just like the raven from the work in question in their imagination. It also allows people to learn about harmful experiences without going through them. It promotes empathy and allows people to feel what others are bearing. In “The Raven”, the woman the narrator loves passed away, and readers are shown the misery his life becomes afterwards. It can teach them to empathize with people who are experiencing something difficult such as the loss of a loved…

    • 620 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I also think the way the author brings the reader into the story not only is fascinating but gives the reader a personal connection to the story so that when the story does takes its twist, it pulls on the heart…

    • 449 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what…

    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Fiction improves empathy by allowing the reader to imagine what the characters are experiencing. Gaiman talks about “how you’re being someone else and when you return to your own world, you’re going to be slightly changed”. This means that when someone reads, they are essentially being someone else and imagining the types of activities and events that they go through. And when they stop reading, they have different views thus changing their opinions about something. So by being someone else, readers can improve their empathy and help them view things differently. Another thing that reading fiction can do is that reading fiction can help improve theory of mind. Theory of mind is thinking what another person may be thinking based on the situation at hand, similar to empathy. Bergland knows this because he realizes that “the imaginative and cognitive benefits of children losing themselves in a good story and learning to empathize with a fictional character”. Once again, readers reading fiction can empathize with the character and a reader who can empathize with a fictional character can improve theory of mind. By improving theory of mind, people can imagine and think what people the other person may be thinking and as a result, they can change a person’s view on another person. Since reading fiction improves theory of mind and empathy, it can help change views about people and their…

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays