“Literature goes beyond life. It is art; it is an imaginative creation that can tell truths gracefully, subtly through narrative, poetry and the movement of characters on a stage. Any imaginative act suggests possibility, and this is another reason to continue studying literature” (Boodakian).
Literature is a separate independent world charming the people within the centuries for its unique reflection of truth. It is impossible to define whether literature reflects the life as it is happening or hints at the tendencies in the society that are going to happen soon. The fact that stays constant is that literature is interconnected with the human life and represents it in the most beautiful artistic form. This paper is thus going to explain the idea of Florence Dee Boodakian that literature as any other form of art is the beautiful form of truth and reality and argue in its favor.
It was somehow meant to be even thousands of years ago that the human is a dreamer. There has always been a need for both males and females to get away (in thoughts) into the new reality – the world without flaws. This world supposes adventures with the happy ending, the perfect conditions for eliciting his/her potential, and the beauty in all its guises.
Dreaming and imagination found their manifestation in oral folk arts that later transformed into writing. The ability of fixing the fantastic world in the human mind may be considered a blessing – if, for some reason, it never happened, dozens of generations would not be able to admire the imagination of the former ones. The power of the human thought would stay only in the intangible condition and it might not influence greatly the human thoughts in future.
“A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal” (Big Fish, 2003). The perception of life becomes easier when a person colors his/her life in bright colors and creates a beautiful world out of it. The ability to interpret the reality and make it more fantastic is a talent of both an artist and any creative person who longs for the beauty.
Adding art to the human life means making it sublime, sensitive, and beautiful. Imagination that develops as the result of connection with art shapes life into what the person wants it to be. Objectivity does not truly exist – there is a beauty in the eyes of the watcher, and only the watcher’s perspective is true.
Every life situation has different angles and perspectives. The art and the challenge of the human are to perceive it as an outstanding and extraordinary one. Imagination might distort it but still make it more interesting (Big Fish, 2003). It is the choice and the preference of an individual how to perceive it.
Literature is an endless road – studying it will never bore a person who is a dreamer. Everything fantastic that can be found in literature can shape into a definite form in reality. This makes it so attractive to the humanity – everything is possible when the true faith is present. And basing on the fact that each person is taught to believe in miracles and has a love for imagination since childhood, then the fantasy is just another form of reality. It is another dimension so it might be real as the reality itself.
Diving into the bottomless ocean of literature means giving one’s mind an opportunity to live the new life where there is no need to separate fact from fiction – there is no border between the normality and the nonsense (Big Fish, 2003). The contemporary individual’s mind-set as well as wide knowledge depends on his/her relationships with art. One may not love theater or painting but if he/she adores literature, his/her world is already fuller and brighter than that without it.
Art is the beautiful reflection of life. Art is the phantom of imagination. Art forms are the person’s realization, his/her saviors in the moment of grief and the never-ending inspiration and motivation. The narration of the story in the artistic form is a sacred action covered with mystery and magic. The story is the basics of every art form and it is inevitable that the imagination for creating of more and more new stories is eternal.
Realizing it makes the person admire literature and the cult of the story as the beginning of all types of art even more. So there is no doubt whether the continuation of studying literature is reasonable. It would be more appropriate to say that ignoring literature is a huge loss rather than studying it is just a pleasant life supplement.
The individual only lives once – unfortunately, it takes the whole life to fully realize it. The purity, wisdom, and beauty that art enriches the life with are the features worth of aspiring to so the value of art is obvious. On the way of self-perfecting, one should never part with the imagination and creativity because they are the life itself. The paper thus confirms the statement made by Florence Dee Boodakian that everything resulting from imagination is possible, and literature is a boundless source that should never be rejected by the humans.
Works Cited
Boodakian, Florence Dee. In Defense of Literature. N.d. Website no longer available.
Burton, Tim, dir. Big Fish. Columbia Pictures, 2003. Film.
