Day 2--I wish that The Ministry of Magic was hiring

What do you do with an English degree?

Usually when I hear this question I respond with: "Buy a lotto ticket and pray."  If I were to give it some time, however, my answer is a little more on the shade of shared humanity.

I believe that literature is the oldest form of immortality.  Music is a few centuries behind, and movies are a few centuries behind that (but both very worthy contenders).  Why is The Canterbury Tales, written by Chaucer at the end of 14th century still funny?  Because fart jokes are funny to human beings.  Why do people still care about Romeo and Juliet, tweaked and produced by Shakespeare in the 1590s?  Because people can still relate to irrational things we do when we fall in love.

Do you know why Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) opens with a letter from judge attesting that she actually wrote it?  Because the majority of the population didn't believe that a black person, yet alone a black woman, was capable of creative intelligence.  Through this work and many others, perceptions of African Americans were challenged.

Speaking of which...Uncle Tom's Cabin, written by Stowe in 1852, was the 2nd best selling book in the 19th century (behind the Bible).  It's a poorly written book full of stereotypes, but it was enough of a sentimental novel that it evoked protests, heated arguments, plays, anti-Tom novels, and influenced, in part, the spark of the Civil War.  

The Jungle (1906) was written by Sinclair as a means to attack capitalism, but it actually spurned on what is now known as The Food and Drug Administration due to the disgusting reports of the meat packing industry.

And how many friends have been made over the love of Harry Potter? Twilight? Game of Thrones? The Catcher in the Rye? Sex and the City?

When I say that literature is immortal is because of its scope of empathy.  Humanity hasn't changed that much.  You can still cringe when you read about a slave's fresh being torn up with a whip because you understand pain.  You can still laugh with Shakespeare because you can understand what it's like to laugh at fools.  You can still relate to Holden Caufield and Ester Greenwood because you know what it feels like to be lost. Literature is about the human experience, the human story.  Literature reminds us what it is to be human and what it has always meant to be human, ie love, pain, humor, struggle, friendship, family.

I do think that literature is important. I do think it's relevant. 

But to translate that into a job?...I'm completely adrift...But that's for another entry...