Reading can really make you think

Hello there!

I'm overjoyed right now, because I just finished my Literature course for this year, which is just awesome!
I had to read some poetry and novels by some British authors, then write essays about my impressions of them.

Most of the poetry seemed to glorify creation over the Creator, which I found very humanistic. The Only Poet I remember actually enjoying was John Keats. He's pretty awesome isn't he? Then there were other poems that were written around the time of WWI that introduced new ideas, or at least voiced ideas that no one had dared speak aloud before, about the plain reality of war. But each poem presented it's point and the idea that the poet was trying to convey very nicely.

I was especially depressed by Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, which is a poem about a man who struggles to reconcile his faith in God to Darwin's Evolutionary Theory. Darwin wins. It was so, so depressing. My heart went out to Arnold, who abandoned the truth in pursuit of lies.

The novels were well enough, but the only one that I actually enjoyed was Jane Austen's Emma. Though I admit I was a fan of hers long before this Lit. course. Yeah, I'm one of those girls, (Jane Austen fan).

The others were well written but each chilling in it's own way, so they were books that I would most definitely not re-read for pleasure. And hopefully will never have to re-read ever. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, was one of them. Honestly, it was well written and I enjoyed that part, but the whole taking dead people's body parts and sewing them together to create giant monster, was just gross. The story was a tragedy that played to human nature, saying that it is society that is the problem, and that people are inwardly good, but the Bible teaches otherwise.

I also read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, which was the sad story of Darwinian Evolutionary Theory carried out to the extreme.

 And today I finished The Animal Farm By George Orwell (Eric Blair), about animals who over throw their oppressive owner and start their own republic with a pig named Napoleon at the helm. It is a story that was written to criticise Stalinistic Communism. Not communism all around, only Stalinistic communism. It shows how communism, instead of liberating the people only enslaves them to a greater degree than they ever were before. It was well written, but hard to read because of the injustice of the whole situation.

Many of these books and poems are considered classics because they changed people. This literature presented new radical (at the time) ideas that challenged people's thinking and basically changed cultures. That is the effect that literature can have on the public. And that is why I want to write Christian fiction that encourages people in their faith, instead of tearing it down. The written word can make a difference.

So write!