Does it Matter What We Read?

By Wendy Sue Patch

If the mind is transformed through its reaction to reading, what then can we say to support this relevance through reader-response criticism and its continued importance to literature? Thinking back to my childhood I can remember my elementary school teachers reading aloud to us. The books that they choose moved me from place to place, never wanting to come home. When I think of this memory it has only strengthened my desire to read and be carried to my next literary adventure.

A child reads and finds him or herself in a place maybe familiar maybe new, but the same story or piece of words gathered on the pages for another child or an adult could bring them to a very different place. It is not about the exact words it is about the interpretation by the mind of whom the reader is. If I said “The man traveled along the lone and dusty road”, for some it would mean a country road, for some it would mean a path in a country, for some it would be a trail to a place, that is the response that we would hope to find. A different place for each person’s mind to travel is what’s longed for; a place for each individual to experience their own journey in their own way, is what they desire.

A man from the 1800’s would expect a different type of life than a man of today. The fast paced world where you can be across the world in a few short hours is different than when it took the same amount of time to travel to the next county or state. The travel time is different because the times are more advanced. This is important because the reader has to take these things into consideration, and that is why, when the reader closes their eyes they see what they, want to see, in the words on each literary page but some facts are consistent and unchanging.

When we read literary works we choose what the interpretation of it becomes, we are allowed to take our experience, our interests, our thoughts, and our desires and use them to become part of that work. It is not enough to read the words but to understand that they mean, something different to every reader. There are common truths and concrete connotation in every work yet the denotation of the same work is much broader. It covers a host of things independent of what the writer may have wanted us to hear or feel or believe.

The limitations of the works are based on individuals, time and places. A man reads and interprets differently than a woman or a child. Likewise, a professor reads differently than the student, reading means something conclusive to each person. Why does it matter? It matters only that we understand there will be differences in the interpretation and changes or limits based on things like, time, place, history, laws and culture. The interpretation may have been during the time of slavery, however we cannot change that in the work, but have to acknowledge it’s meaning for that time in history, and accept what the author was expressing. If I read, The Birth-Mark, by Nathaniel Hawthorn, (p. 290), the Barn Burning, by William Faulkner, (p. 187), or The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, (p. 478), I would have to acknowledge certain traits in time and history that I could not leave out in my interpretation of that story. We can feel different emotions regarding that time, but its words are true to what transpired then, not now.

How does all of this movement in literature claim its value? How does it matter what we read and why? How can we know that literature will continue to inspire the reader? It is because of the heart of each individual. When the mind travels through the words of each literary piece, the heart can feel a sad moment, a blissful day, a fearful tragedy, a passionate experience, and a quietness of sound, all through the pages of one or many words in literature.