Heather's Lens Excerpt

We encounter lenses every day in life, from eye glasses to telescopes. However, not many people think of their own lenses, the type you can’t see but can see through. People’s opinions and worldviews are decided by the lenses they look through in their every day activities. There are lenses of gender, personality, experiences, religious beliefs, temperament, age, location, traditions, culture, and etiquette. If we take a microscope and investigate each of the types of lenses people use, we will find that they influence an individual’s expectations of others and themselves, comprehension of subject matter and what is going on around them, interpretation of materials or actions, and also control their responses to questions. What really excites me about lenses is the possibility that you can use literature and the way you personally interpret it to understand cultural, social and political issues. We are all shaped by what happens to us in society and what happens to us politically. What writers then do is shape stories around these various experiences, so we as readers can use our life’s lenses in order to better understand these stories. People learn to internalize concepts in novels in ways that allow them to make meaning in their life, both in terms of character development and of the various dialogues that emanate from the work.
A literary lens is like putting yourself in the character’s shoes. By looking through various people’s perspectives, we can more thoroughly understand the world. If we were narrow-minded and only looked at the world through our own perspective, the world wouldn’t make as much sense. With everyone’s perspectives, the understanding of our society makes a lot more sense, as well as our understanding of the action that takes place in the book.

Responses:

• Re: Heather's Lens Excerpt John (4/24/03 7:32 AM)