Why English Literature?

Padma Devkota

Why English Literature?

    Why do you want to study English literature? Wake up from your vague and romantic dreams of roses and poetry. Wake up from your ideals of a perfect world abounding in love and beauty. The world you live in is in reality ugly and torn with violence, which you probably have come to accept as a result of habitual acquaintance with it as an everyday phenomenon. Therein lies the danger to humanity.
    When the frequency of brutal acts around us deadens our sensibility and makes us perceive the ugly as normal, we begin to thrive as sub-humans. There is no weapon, no tool, no pill, nor syrup that can regenerate our benumbed sensibility. It wilts under the blows of incessant brutality that surrounds us, it withers in the heat of violence that erupts everywhere, and it dies for lack of care like an unwatered plant.
    What a desert is to vegetation, savagery is to sensibility. Each insensitive word and action kills another heart. Each show of brutal strength wrings a tear from another eye. We long for a civilization that respects individuality. We want to live in a world where we deserve to be respected because we respect other people. We want to live in a world where we are afraid to hurt the sentiments of other human beings.
    Our longing can only be realized through action, not through certificates we carry in our bags. Our habits of mind and body have to be fashioned to respond in desirable ways dictated by the world we long to create for ourselves and for futurity. This is what education is all about. Our education fails exactly at that point where the transference of goals into action remains incomplete.
    What goal can be nobler than that of promoting a human civilization? Can anyone in a state of sanity justify violence against humanity for whatever cause it may be? Of course not! Yet, the antidote to violence, which is all around us, goes unrecognized as such like some nameless medicinal herb in our front yard. It is there only for discerning eyes.
    A study of literature opens that discerning inward eye, which recognizes the beauty of life that blooms on the meadow of human sensibility. For, a study of literature is a sharing of sensibilities across cultures. And good literature is the best expression of the best minds. What they all tell us, in essence, is to maintain human dignity by not falling into a state of savagery, to remain pro-life in our attitudes, and to uphold the religion of love.
    Peoples across cultures have responded to these human needs in pretty similar ways. Like William Wordsworth, they have lamented, "What Man has made of Man." Man has plundered, slaughtered, tortured, maimed, jived, crippled, bereaved, hurt, wounded, exploited, mocked, enslaved, and snatched the very dignity of living from other human beings. This has been the experience of millions of people living in the world today.
    And, this is what a study of good literature hopes to counteract, not through mere delight in the written word, but through a sharpening of the sensibilities of students who then will uphold civilization against savagery, preservation against destruction of life, and a spontaneous flowing out of the human heart towards other people against a selfish culture of pragmatic self-promotion. Any literature that inspires people to such noble goals rises like a peak to transcendent and transcending altitudes that are forever flushed by the warmth of love and embraced by an abundance of devotion.
    Where do such literatures exist? They are everywhere. The Vedas and the Bibles have lasted for thousands of years because they were able to capture the essence of being human even in that distant past. More modern texts have dealt with more modern problems of being or not being human. From the tribulations of existence to the difficulties of understanding our selves and the world we live in, from the awareness of the painful reality to the aspirations for romantic ideals of the human world, good literature has ever guided our hearts towards light and life.
Our individual capacities determine how much each of us is able to draw out of great works of literature. Mere quantity of ingestion, however, may not determine the correction or enhancement of our individual sensibility. Our cultivated attitudes and aspirations, our personal visions and conceptions, and even the company we keep will influence our taste for culture and sensibility.
Spatiotemporal, political or religious boundaries cannot dictate the company we keep. We befriend Africa, America, China, England, France, India, Japan, and all other nations of the world through the masterpieces of their cultural expressions. Good literature is always worth our time. The university curriculum, of course, has to limit itself to certain objectives to be achieved within a given period of time.
And, English is the medium. There is nothing wrong in this. English is a very powerful world language, which stores almost ninety percent of the world's knowledge. Its scientific and technical vocabulary is unmatched in many other important languages of the world. It has further empowered itself with recent achievements in information technology, space explorations, electronics and the like. It has become so indispensable a medium of human interaction all over the world that mere linguistic competence in English has become a matter of prestige for many people.
But, there is more to it than social prestige alone. Linguistic competence in English brings better job opportunities because it is somehow directly related to performance at work. Like a carpenter who uses a hammer to make many different kinds of furniture, a person with a command over the English language is capable of using it as a good tool in many areas. Because linguistic proficiency improves work efficiency, many employers understand and respect it. So, universities, educational institutes, banks, government offices, NGO's and INGO's, publication houses, media, and many other places willingly hire students of English literature.
While there is a strong job-market for students of English literature, there is much to learn not only in terms of mastering the basic grammar of English but of getting a distinct feel for the nuances within its expressional possibilities. There is much to share in terms of sensibilities respected by the civilized world. There is plenty to learn about our own selves and others. Cultural sharing enhances sensibility, which a course in English literature attempts to provide. Therefore, it can be expected that anyone who respects sensibilities will want to learn what the best minds have so well expressed in the English language. Isn't this enough reason for you to opt for English literature at the Master's level?

(An address delivered at Universal College, Maitidevi, to a gathering of students trying to decide upon a major. Monday, November 28, 2005.)