There is something about literature that can bridge gaps, create catalysts, and build boats to get us from one side of thinking to the other. This is vital for any type of peace, love, or joy to occur. First, we must understand each other. Books can take us into a world where this is completely possible.
Literature escapes reality. While reading, the physical world around you no longer exists (unless you are sitting completely uncomfortably). Instead, you are transported to a world of different possibilities with different rules and different regulations. With new rules and regulations also comes new freedoms and abilities. A lower-class, Caucasian Atheist and an upper-class, African American Christian can be united by the ability to enter the same world, if only temporarily. Both can join Harry Potter’s fight against Lord Voldemort or relish in the minds of each character Virginia Woolf created. Therefore, my question is this: How can we transfer this skill into another setting, a setting in which we use it to understand one another?
While reading, we can be anyone, whether that is a boy wizard fighting evil, a courageous African American maid from decades past shedding light on the truth, or even a little girl who is transported to a new world through a wardrobe with her brothers and sister. If we can relate to a character enough, we can momentarily become them. Once we are attached to a character, we understand their thoughts, actions, and motivations. I find myself becoming easily attached to characters who have little parts of me inside them.
On the surface, Ginny Weasley in Harry Potter, Belle from Beauty and the Beast, Katniss in The Hunger Games, and Skeeter in The Help have little in common. However, in me they all have something in common. I can relate to each of their stories because I can see parts of myself inside of them. Therefore, I can dig deeply into their thoughts. I want to hold on and find out something new about myself, and more times than not I do.
Every person who reads has a web of characters like mine, and no two webs are completely the same. Therefore, all persons have insight into a different kind of thinking. If we would stop long enough to see this, we would see how easy it would be to do the same in "the real world". We should not have to be transported to a fictional place to be able to make peace happen—we can use the tool of reading to find parts of ourselves inside each person we meet. It is so much easier to understand another human being if we can see our similarities instead of our differences. With understanding comes a true caring that is so strong peace is bound to follow. If we treated people with the same respect we give to books, we could cause a revolution of love.
