Lindsey Arnold

ENG 4990
9-19-2021

Self-Construction

We spend a lot of our lives during our years of schooling reading, not only for our

English classes, but for all of our classes, no matter the content. We read novels in English,

textbooks in history, even word problems in math classes. But why are we reading all of these

things? What do we gain? We spend hours on end reading in and out of classes. I know,

personally, that I spend at least around three hours completing reading assignments for each class

period. That equates to at least twenty-one hours per week spent reading outside of classes.

Those numbers fail to even account for the time spent reading during class. That is a very large

commitment to be made for something that no benefit, no meaning, no greater use. So there must

be a use, but what exactly is that use? I view it as a want to become a better person, the best

person one can be. Reading allows us to reach new levels of self-development that we otherwise

might never attain.

When I first think of the reason we gravitate towards reading, I think back to reading

Helen Vendler’s essay and the discussion she has of her love of reading. There is something

innately pleasing about the act of picking up a book, cracking the cover, and absorbing the words

on the page. There is a feeling of something gained. Vendler argues that every work is its own

unique piece of knowledge, yet somehow all works connect together. These works seem to create

a map of knowledge and there is something incredibly inspiring about those connections. To me

they mimic the synapses in the brain creating new paths of knowledge. In a summing up of her

description of the experience of reading, she makes a comment describing the reason for that

love: “Nothing is more lonely than to go through life uncompanioned by a sense that others have
also gone through it, and have left a record of their experience” (39). When we read, we find a

completely untold story that we have never before experienced, yet at the same time we see

pieces of our own lives and experiences within the work. The combination is new, but many of

the pieces are known. Literature and words connect the world into a sort of web that overlaps but

distinguishes itself in every sentence, bringing new meaning to the world and to life. The reader

grows through learning other’s stories and is able to apply that gained knowledge to life to

become a better person. Therefore, we read because we love to, and we love to because it helps

us to grow.

We find a love for reading as children but as we grow that love is questioned because it is

difficult to prove our growth by reading through the work we love. We move into reading only

‘educational’ works, the classics or the canon one might say, because those allow us to prove that

we are gaining something. We can discuss the texts we read and point out each and every detail

we have stored in our minds for later use. The books we loved as children are cast aside because

what can be learned from a detective story, a teenage love story, or a comedy? Janice Radway

discusses her experiences with the dissonance between the love of her personal reading choices

versus those commonly used for educational purposes. Radway states, “My new tastes somehow

failed to duplicate precisely the passion of my response to those other, suspect, supposedly

transparent, popular books. Those books prompted physical sensations, a forgetting of the self

and complete absorption in another world. The books that came to me as high culture…

carried… the threat that somehow I might fail to recognize their reputed meaning and inherent

worth” (201). Radway here comments on the context of reading and the importance of reading to

learn, but not for proof of learning. She learned more from her own reading choices because she

was not worrying about proving what she had learned. What are we truly learning if we are
forced to show that which we have learned? We are so focused on appearing as if we have

learned that there fails to exist a truly deep-seated want to remember the lessons of the literature.

The literature itself does not cause this but rather the approach to reading it. When we embrace

the knowledge of the material without testing ourselves and looking down on ourselves for what

we miss rather focusing on what we gain, that is when reading allows us to grow. This is the very

conundrum that schools face.

I want to comment, too, on the essay by Paulo Freire in a bit more depth because he

argues a very similar point. Freire comments on the importance of reading to truly learn and

therefore, reading to become a better person, a more learned person. He speaks about the

connection between the two, one that not everyone can easily understand. Freire uses the

beautiful description of reading allowing us to become “fully human”, the same way I view life’s

journey. It is as if something is missing from life without the act of reading. There is a vital

nature to read actively. We educate ourselves only by reading in an active nature, not simply

expecting our minds to soak in the words and gain meaning from them. When we read with the

intent to learn, we learn. That simple. So we choose to read because we want to learn, to grow

into someone we were not yet before we picked up the book. We pull a new piece of ourselves

out of the pages and connect it to the body we have before us. Freire writes, “Problem-posing

education affirms men as being in the process of becoming – as unfinished, uncompleted beings

in and with a likewise unfinished reality. Men know themselves to be unfinished; they are aware

of their incompletion. The unfinished character of men and the transformational character of

reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity” (76-77). Since we are aware of our own

incompletion, we read actively with the intent to learn the things that are missing from our
person. We know we need more growth; in fact, we never cease to grow more fully into who we

are able to be. We open up books in search of ourselves.

Some people, however, find that they do not believe that the betterment of the person can

come about by reading. It is easy to look at the act of reading and think that it can only grow

knowledge, not create someone or help cultivate someone into the person they want to become.

Harold Bloom writes of a confrontation with an educator who told him that, “reading without a

constructive social purpose was unethical” and that the teacher “urged me (Bloom) to reeducate

myself” (226). This baffles me given that the purpose of reading in my eyes and apparently in

Bloom’s, as well as the previous authors cited, is not to construct society, but to construct

oneself. Bloom responds with a similar argument in stating, “I think that the self, in its quest to

be free and solitary, ultimately reads with one aim only: to confront greatness” (230). Through

reading, we not only confront the author’s greatness in the words he or she has previously

written, but also our own greatness in what we take away from the experience. There is always

something new to be understood from literature. We come into the experience looking to find

something, better understand something, answer a question, or even simply to get a new view on

a topic. Learning anything at all adds to our self and enhances us towards the very greatness that

Bloom discusses. The more Experiences we can allow ourselves, the greater we can be and the

more we are able to gain. There is no limit. The only limitation is the refusal to read, the refusal

to grow. If we read, we inevitably gain something in life. We construct ourselves through the act

of reading.
 Works Cited

Vendler, Helen. “What We Have Loved, Others Will Love.” Falling Into Theory, edited by

David H. Richter, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000, 31-40.

Freire, Paulo. “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education.” Falling Into Theory, edited by David

H. Richter, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000, 68-78.

Radway, Janice. “Introduction to A Feeling for Books.” Falling Into Theory, edited by David

H. Richter, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000, 199-210.

Bloom, Harold. “Elegiac Conclusion.” Falling Into Theory, edited by David H. Richter,

Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000, 225-233.