Reading And The Human Condition

Loretta, a primary character in Joyce Carol Oat’s novel them, grew up in the Detroit slums, watched the boy she loved die in her bed at age 16, married a police officer out of necessity, bore two children and struggled to make her hardscrabble life as dreamy as possible. My life is nothing like Loretta’s. I will never face her circumstances. Still, I found myself in her, became Loretta for a brief time, wrapped up in her life rather than my own. Books take me out of myself and help me connect to other people, be they well-drawn characters or flesh and blood human beings.

I discovered them in a used bookstore in my early 20s after graduating college, and quickly devoured everything I could find by Oates. Her characters leave me charged with empathy and wrestling with my own interiority. I believe that all humanity is connected. Any of us can bring about great good or great evil that effects the lives of others. Reading helped me develop that world view. Reading expands empathy, understanding and love for others.

I have never hidden from Nazis in an attic, but feel a part of Anne Frank’s fear. I will never birth a stillborn child and feed my breast milk to a starving old man as young Rose of Sharon did in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. The gift of breast milk brought tears to my eyes and deep love for Rose of Sharon and her mother. Part of me will forever be on that rickety journey with the Joad family to a promised land that did not exist.

Because of reading, I have a better capacity to understand someone like Celie in The Color Purple. I can glimpse into the emotional world of Toni Morrison’s Sethe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne. Reading has strengthened my capacity for empathy, opened my eyes to the troubles and viewpoints of others, the reasons for certain actions. Because of great writers and the characters they create, I am less self-centered. I am more understanding and open minded. So I keep reading. There is more room to grow, more characters to help me better connect with others, more chances to find versions of myself, again and again, in the pages of a well written novel.