Five Things I've Gained from Reading Literature

Here's my response to Traci Gardner's questions:

What piece of literature has stayed with you, even though you haven't read it recently? Charlotte's Web by E.B. White is a wonderful story of friendship and creativity.  I have always loved the line, "It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."

What character or story has influenced something you've done? Neighbor Rosicky (from Willa Cather's short story of the same name) realizes that his entire corn crop has been destroyed after a hot July day of searing heat. He leaves his fields in the late afternoon, returns to his family and to his wife who is preserving plums, and he arranges for a picnic in the family’s orchard. Only after the evening meal does he tell his wife that after all his work, they've lost everything. When she retells the story to her sons, she says, "An' that's how your father behaved, when all the neighbours was so discouraged they couldn't look you in the face. An' we enjoyed ourselves that year, poor as we was, an' our neighbors wasn't a bit better off for bein' miserable." I've thought of Rosicky's example often when confronting failure or disappointment.

What character or piece of literature seemed to relate to a recent news story or personal experience?  John Edwards, this one’s for you….It seems that every election cycle, every time we suffer through political primaries and the general election, I’m reminded of W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” particularly these lines:  Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/ The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” 

What character has made you wonder why he or she did/said something? Hamlet, always Hamlet.  Nearly all his actions are open to multiple interpretations, but I’m particularly curious about his unbearable rudeness and cruelty towards Ophelia.   Was it more play-acting?  Was it to distance her from himself (and if so, for his sake or for hers?)  Or was it immature and boorish self-absorption, helped along by misogyny?

Name something from a work of literature (such as a character, setting, or quotation) that you find beautiful or vivid. I love these lines from Wendell Berry’s poem "The Peace of Wild Things":

"I come into the peace of wild things/Who do not tax their lives with forethought/of grief.  I come into the presence of still water./And I feel above me the day-blind stars/waiting with their light.  For a time/I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."