Plato versus Literature

Daniel Toré asks, can literature save us?

- Daniel Toré 

Take a second to sincerely ask yourself: has literature improved my life? There’s often an immediate pinprick reaction to defend our most beloved stories, as if our safety blanket is being snatched away from us. But letting go of nostalgia and its associated emotions will help us to think critically. Are all these drawn-out evenings staring at paper really worth it, and if so, how?

For the first seventeen years of my life I read only what school demanded of me, and felt sincerely that it would be more enjoyable to eat a book than to open one. Then, one day, a browned and dogeared copy of Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love (1997) caught my eye, in the same way that something you pass every day can inexplicably gain new life and you see it as if for the very first time. I read it cover to cover almost in one sitting, and it ignited in me a burning passion for literature that has never dimmed.

I’ve always considered this a personally pivotal moment, in which I crossed a bridge out of childhood, exchanging juice boxes for coffee, Velcro for laces, and Saturday cartoons for stock market speculation. But was it because of the book itself, or was it just the timing? Could it be that I had suddenly matured, or rather, that I found doing something typically adult novel (no pun intended)? Or was it because I simply enjoyed the sittinginside-on-a-rainy-day feeling, which just so happened to have involved a book? Regardless, I liked it, and parallel to this, I somehow matured from a child to a mostly functioning adult. My question is, then: did literature save me? Can it save us?

To be clear, I don’t mean, can literature save us from drowning? No, it can’t. Instead, I mean to ask: can literature save us in the sense of enlightening us?