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Juliana Madzia
Professor Vaughn
Intermediate Composition 2089
19 September 2014
Rediscovering Purpose: A Girl’s Journey From Anne Shirley to Sartre
Growing up, books were as widespread as oxygen atoms in my house, and
probably just as necessary for life, too. From the day that I was born until the time that I
became capable of reading on my own, there was not a day that passed that someone in
my family—my mother, father, grandmother, or grandfather—did not read to me. Floorto-ceiling bookshelves lined our living room, basement, and every bedroom. They were
filled with a conglomeration of old, new, fiction, nonfiction, illustrated, poetryeverything imaginable. It was this atmosphere that shaped my love of reading, which
would eventually come to define the way I acted in all aspects of life and the way I
viewed the world around me.
Although I did not realize it at the time, the primary literacy event of my young
life was my discovery of the book Anne of Green Gables. I do not recall how I first came
upon the book, but I was instantly won over by the brilliant and stubborn red-haired
orphan, Anne Shirley. At the age of six, I visited Prince Edward Island, the Canadian
province in which the book takes place. On Prince Edward Island, Anne became my life.
As Erika Petersen says is true of every one of her interviewees in “Past Experiences and
Future Attitudes in Literacy,” I can recall “with great detail, as if they had happened
yesterday” (194) a seemingly infinite number of moments where I felt like I was living in
the Anne of Green Gables story. I visited the house after which Green Gables had been
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modeled, and imagined myself as Anne as I walked around the yard, around the large
white and green house. I was transfixed by the sun that shone brightly on the lawn and
the smell of lupine flowers that wafted through the air. For a brief spell, I felt like I had
been transported back to the fictional village of Avonlea in the early twentieth century. I
even had the opportunity to taste the bubbly, refreshing raspberry cordial that is such an
integral part of the Anne of Green Gables storyline. In Charlottetown, I saw “Anne of
Green Gables: The Musical” and memorized the lyrics to every song and the name of
every cast member. I bought a straw hat and red-haired, braided wig so that I could even
look just like Anne (Figure 1).
The following three summers were spent in exactly the same way. When I had to
return to Ohio, I lived Anne’s life vicariously through watching the Anne of Green
Gables made-for-TV movie over and over again. There is a scene in the book where
Anne participates in a spelling bee and wins the bee by correctly spelling the word
“chrysanthemum.” I asked my grandfather to put on fake spelling bees, in which I was
the sole participant, and every spelling bee would culminate with me being declared the
winner after correctly spelling the word “chrysanthemum.” The climax of my Anne of
Green Gables passion came when, at the age of seven, I wrote a story titled Anne of
Green Gables: The Continuing Story, in which all of the characters ended up getting
married to other main characters and living happily together for the rest of their lives
(Figure 2). Perhaps I thought that if I looked and acted like Anne, I would naturally pick
up some of her sharp wit and pure intelligence.
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Figure 1. Visiting Prince Edward Island, dressed
as Anne Shirley
Figure 2. Lines from Anne of Green Gables
written from memory early in elementary school
While Anne is surely the most dramatic example, I seemed to immerse myself in
every book that I read throughout my childhood. There was nothing better than sitting for
hours getting lost in a book, any book, and finding ways to connect that book to my own
life. I loved to try to emulate my favorite characters; thus, the books that I chose to read
become an enormous factor in shaping the person that I was to become. These habits also
began to trickle over into my academic life. In order to memorize difficult scientific
processes, I would make up short stories in my head about how each component played
its role in forming the whole, and then connect those ideas to real-life situations in order
to make them seem more tangible and understandable. Once I decided that I wanted to
become a doctor, the act of emulation once again came into play. I envisioned myself in
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the role of a successful neurosurgeon, and then surrounded myself with opportunities and
situations that would make it possible for me to achieve that goal. These are actions that I
continue to practice to this day, as I progress into more and more advanced science
courses in my college education.
Thinking back over all of the reading that I did during my years of school, I don’t
think that I ever really read with a specific purpose or a goal. I read because I loved the
way I felt when I read. I read books that I thought sounded exciting or intriguing, not
books that I thought would make me smarter or help me out in the future. Perhaps that
was why I found books so magical, because they removed me from the otherwise
focused, competitive life that I lived. During my senior year of high school, however,
something changed. In my mind, I developed this arrogant idea that books not directly
related to what I planned to study in college or do as a future career were not worth my
time. Not that they weren’t good books, but that I, as a future doctor and neuroscientist,
did not have the time to read fictional novels anymore. I stocked my shelves with books
with titles such as A Skeptic’s Guide to the Mind and The Principles of Neural Science.
These were topics that I was genuinely interested in, but I could never fall head over
heels into these books the way that I had always previously been able to. Reading them
seemed like a chore, something that I had to sit down and really focus my attention on.
Whereas most books, regardless of their size and content, had taken me less than a week
to finish in the past, I got stuck on these books for weeks or months, and sometimes
didn’t finish them at all.
After my first year of college, I came to the conclusion that the lofty idea that I
couldn’t read anything other than neuroscience books was completely irrational. I spent a
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month studying in France, and while there I became reintroduced to existential
philosophy. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, existentialism
emphasizes individual existence, freedom, and choice, and takes the view that humans
define their own meaning in life. I had loved this topic when I studied it in my high
school French class, so on a whim I bought Jean-Paul Sartre’s L’existentialisme est un
humanisme (Existentialism and Humanism) from a used book store in Normandy. Sartre
is difficult enough to comprehend in English, so I am not entirely sure why I felt so
compelled to read the book in French. Perhaps it felt more authentic that way. I read the
book voraciously, with a French dictionary in one hand and a pencil in the other, so that I
could take note of unfamiliar words and mark my favorite passages as I read. I envisioned
an old black-and-white version of Sartre himself, sitting in a Parisian café where the
smell of fresh baguettes and espresso wafted through the room, telling me in a thick
French accent all of the ideas that I was reading in his book. This was the kind of reading
that I had been missing for so long, the kind where I could turn page after page without
stopping, read my book while walking up and down the stairs of my house, and continue
thinking about the book long after I had closed it. When I finished reading, I loved the
fact that the corners of the book were bent, the spine was slightly worn, and there were
several coffee stains on the pages. Like a pair of my favorite old running shoes, the book
seemed lived in, and it just felt right. Existential theory struck a chord with me. It didn’t
necessarily change how I viewed the world, but it put solid words to my ideas. Just as
Sherman Alexie spoke of his realization that everyone existed as a separate paragraph but
had common experiences that linked them, I also began “seeing the world in paragraphs”
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(130). The book helped me to put meaning in the world and gave new definition to my
surroundings.
Upon finishing L’existialisme est un humanisme, my mind was once again
stimulated to read the way that it used to. At last, I have learned how to read with a
purpose, but I now know that doesn’t mean I have to solely read books that will directly
benefit my academic knowledge in my field. I see now that every book, whether it is a
romance novel, a philosophical essay, or a compilation of poems, has the capacity to
change my life if I am willing to be receptive to it. One of Sartre’s most important
maxims of existentialism is that nothing has meaning independent of what we choose to
give it, and it is up to each of us to make that meaning. From this I have realized that I
cannot open a book and expect it to transform my world simply because it has a great,
thought-provoking title, any more than I can expect a fantasy novel to be a waste of my
time. Each book that I read is no more and no less than what I make of it and how I
interpret it and apply my own ideas and experiences to it as I read.
Just as I did with Anne of Green Gables so long ago, I can once again become
enveloped in the characters or ideas about which I am reading. I may have shed the red
braided wig that so strongly signified my connection with the Anne of my childhood, but
deep down I am still that same reader. L’existentialisme est un humanisme helped me to
reach within myself and dig out the reader that I have been since that fateful summer on
Prince Edward Island. I read, not because I want to escape from anything in my current
life, but because books allow me to envision future worlds and possibilities that I
otherwise would not know. They show me where I want to go, or at least nudge me in the
right direction.
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Works Cited
Alexie, Sherman. “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me.” Writing about
Writing: A College Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2014. 129-131. Print.
Crowell, Steven. "Existentialism." Stanford University. Stanford University, 23 Aug.
2004. Web. 17 Sept. 2014.
Peterson, Erika. “Past Experiences and Future Attitudes in Literacy.” Writing about
Writing: A College Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2014. 191-197. Print.