The Beauty Of Literature
There are few things in life that fill me with pure delight and rapture. One of them is literature. A common misconception that many have towards literature is that it is merely a bunch of ancient texts cobbled together by some inconsequential people who have long passed on. Made worse by seemingly garbled words like hither, dither and ho, this presupposition cannot be further from the truth.
Look around, and you will be surprised to find that literature surrounds you. It is in the commonplace activities you do half-consciously, like eating and drinking and washing your clothes. Take for instance the use of alliteration in the low-fat smoothies available at BOOST: Banana Buzz, Blueberry Blast and Berry Bang. It is in the songs that you blast on the radio as you try to conceal your rising annoyance at being stuck in yet another KL traffic jam. It is hidden somewhere between the lines as you skim through the newspaper, sipping your cup of morning coffee. It is everywhere - and it will most probably stay that way.
The indescribably wonderful thing about literature is that you do not have to find a way to force yourself to love it. If you have a favourite song or have felt even a vague liking for the way something is phrased, chances are you already have all it takes to be enraptured over and over again by the beauty of this subject. This is why I fill much of my spare time with the literary analysis of song lyrics. Believe it or not, it is strangely therapeutic.
Carrie Underwood's 'Wine After Whiskey' is one of such songs which never fails to send an involuntary thrill up my spine just from the sheer beauty of what it represents.
'Once upon a time our world was on fire/ and I loved to watch it burn. Wild and reckless never any limits/ guess I had a lot to learn./ Cause fire turns to embers and embers to ashes that blow away too soon.'
These few concise but poignant lines speak volumes. Already we can see the main theme emerging - the disparity between the past and the present, the gap between what is and what should have been. The use of fire as a metaphor of a love which was so impassioned , only to disintegrate into crumbly ashes is so startlingly apt. I am filled with this sense of wonder and excitement. I can hardly contain it. Sometimes, if my joy is too great, I skip off to find someone to unload my amazement on, but am sadly met by raised eyebrows and quizzical looks.
I strongly believe that the defining quality of literature lies in the fact that there is always something more to be discovered. Analyzing a text is like embarking on a scavenger hunt, except that sometimes along the way, you chance upon things that the creators of the hunt did not even know existed. And this, friends, is where the fun lies. In literature, one of the most important lessons you learn is that there is always more to what meets the eye. This is why words like denotation/connotation and similarly, phrases like literal meaning/figurative meaning are so ubiquitous in literary commentaries. While you might be thinking that all these sound very complicating and you are beginning to want to estrange yourself from literature forever, let me remind you that the way our world works, the way people behave all mirror this (almost) life truth. There is always something more to a situation or a scene than can be derived from it at first glance. Looking at the world through literary lenses does not muddle up things; it simply adds a whole new dimension to how you see the world.
And this brings me to the heartbeat of literature - its liberating quality of being open to interpretation. In a world of intense blacks and blinding whites, it is immensely refreshing to find that there is this blessed space where we can let our imagination run free and not worry about having to come to the right answer. While certainty is a good thing to have, sometimes there is a need to simply dabble with the amorphous spaces between the distinct lines. With this in mind, the analysis of a literary text becomes a very personal affair. The way you understand a text is deeply influenced by who you are as a person and the experiences which have moulded you. A specific line could jump out at you because it puts in words perfectly something of which you have been dying to express. Something within you reverberates and the text is no longer a foreign work. It is a part of you, an extension of your being.
This is why I can safely say that I have never analyzed a literary text in all its entirety and still walk away the same person. Inevitably, a part of me now belongs to the text, and a part of the text to me.
By Eleasha Chew Sue Yuen
Look around, and you will be surprised to find that literature surrounds you. It is in the commonplace activities you do half-consciously, like eating and drinking and washing your clothes. Take for instance the use of alliteration in the low-fat smoothies available at BOOST: Banana Buzz, Blueberry Blast and Berry Bang. It is in the songs that you blast on the radio as you try to conceal your rising annoyance at being stuck in yet another KL traffic jam. It is hidden somewhere between the lines as you skim through the newspaper, sipping your cup of morning coffee. It is everywhere - and it will most probably stay that way.
The indescribably wonderful thing about literature is that you do not have to find a way to force yourself to love it. If you have a favourite song or have felt even a vague liking for the way something is phrased, chances are you already have all it takes to be enraptured over and over again by the beauty of this subject. This is why I fill much of my spare time with the literary analysis of song lyrics. Believe it or not, it is strangely therapeutic.
Carrie Underwood's 'Wine After Whiskey' is one of such songs which never fails to send an involuntary thrill up my spine just from the sheer beauty of what it represents.
'Once upon a time our world was on fire/ and I loved to watch it burn. Wild and reckless never any limits/ guess I had a lot to learn./ Cause fire turns to embers and embers to ashes that blow away too soon.'
These few concise but poignant lines speak volumes. Already we can see the main theme emerging - the disparity between the past and the present, the gap between what is and what should have been. The use of fire as a metaphor of a love which was so impassioned , only to disintegrate into crumbly ashes is so startlingly apt. I am filled with this sense of wonder and excitement. I can hardly contain it. Sometimes, if my joy is too great, I skip off to find someone to unload my amazement on, but am sadly met by raised eyebrows and quizzical looks.
I strongly believe that the defining quality of literature lies in the fact that there is always something more to be discovered. Analyzing a text is like embarking on a scavenger hunt, except that sometimes along the way, you chance upon things that the creators of the hunt did not even know existed. And this, friends, is where the fun lies. In literature, one of the most important lessons you learn is that there is always more to what meets the eye. This is why words like denotation/connotation and similarly, phrases like literal meaning/figurative meaning are so ubiquitous in literary commentaries. While you might be thinking that all these sound very complicating and you are beginning to want to estrange yourself from literature forever, let me remind you that the way our world works, the way people behave all mirror this (almost) life truth. There is always something more to a situation or a scene than can be derived from it at first glance. Looking at the world through literary lenses does not muddle up things; it simply adds a whole new dimension to how you see the world.
And this brings me to the heartbeat of literature - its liberating quality of being open to interpretation. In a world of intense blacks and blinding whites, it is immensely refreshing to find that there is this blessed space where we can let our imagination run free and not worry about having to come to the right answer. While certainty is a good thing to have, sometimes there is a need to simply dabble with the amorphous spaces between the distinct lines. With this in mind, the analysis of a literary text becomes a very personal affair. The way you understand a text is deeply influenced by who you are as a person and the experiences which have moulded you. A specific line could jump out at you because it puts in words perfectly something of which you have been dying to express. Something within you reverberates and the text is no longer a foreign work. It is a part of you, an extension of your being.
This is why I can safely say that I have never analyzed a literary text in all its entirety and still walk away the same person. Inevitably, a part of me now belongs to the text, and a part of the text to me.
By Eleasha Chew Sue Yuen
