Andy Dalton
May 3, 2011
ENGL 105
Merritt
Reading and Me: A Love/Hate Relationship
I guess you could say I’ve had a complicated relationship with literacy. It has,
in many ways, taken the shape of a typical romance. I have, at times, been
infatuated with reading. Other times, I have completely turned my back on it. That
being said, reading and writing have had an enormous, irreplaceable influence on
my life until now, and I am sure will continue to do so in the future.
In my formative years, as I began learning to read, I had an overwhelmingly
positive relationship with literacy in both an academic and nonacademic setting. My
parents read to me and were supportive of my personal reading as well. I was
infatuated with the whimsical, musical manipulation of language used by children’s
writers such as Shel Silverstein. Specifically, his short book The Giving Tree had a
profound impact. Using words alone, he was able to construct an alternate world
that had ripples throughout my own life. In this particular story, he describes a
young boy whose best friend is a tree. The boy climbs the tree, uses its shade and
even talks to the tree itself. However, as the boy grows older he starts to need more
and more from the tree in order to survive. Selflessly, the tree provides the boy with
more and more of its fruit and leaves. At the end of the story, the boy asks the tree if
he could cut it down and use the lumber. Of course, the tree obliges and the boy is
left sitting on a wooden stump where his best friend once stood. This story
completely fascinated me. How could someone express feelings through words in a
way that resonated with me on such a personal level?
This positive relationship with literacy was bolstered by my academic
success at the time. Throughout elementary school, I was consistently the best
speller and one of the best readers in my class. While many students put their heads
down when the teacher needed volunteers to read passages, I triumphantly threw
my hand into the air and eagerly snatched each opportunity to showcase my talents.
Furthermore, we were required to complete daily journal assignments. The teacher
would allow us to write on a specific topic or simply free write. I always chose to
free write and eventually had a collection of my own personal short stories. I would
quickly, yet thoroughly, complete out-of-class reading and writing assignments, and
when I was finished jump right into pleasure reading. Needless to say, my parents
were very excited to see their son so enthusiastic about reading. Like my teachers,
they provided me with the positive reinforcement necessary to further encourage
my positive relationship.
These “happy, sunshiny” days in my relationship with literacy would not last
forever, however. In high school, I slowly became less and less interested with the
world of reading and writing. This first manifested itself with me not doing any
reading outside of school. I, like many of my peers, were experiencing our first taste
of life outside of our houses. With our free time we sought to escape home and
spend as much time with friends as possible. Why would anyone want to sit alone
and read? As time progressed, I even stopped doing my assigned readings so that I
could maximize my social time. Unfortunately, this led to a serious drop in my
academic performance. In turn, my relationship with my parents became strained
as well. They, as concerned parents, felt obligated to restore my tarnished literary
practices. Therefore, they started keeping me home and forcing me to study. As one
can expect, this actually had the opposite effect of what they had originally intended.
Because literacy was now a forced exercise, it lost its original allure. Where I was
once fascinated with reading and writing, it now felt like an obligatory chore that I
was more than happy to avoid.
Luckily, my relationship with literacy took an amazing turn during my
summer before coming to Santa Clara University. I remember the exact day, in fact.
For one reason or another, I was particularly restless that day. I do not remember if
I had been fighting with my girlfriend at the time, but I was anxious. My Mom gave
me a recommendation. “Read this book, you’ll like it,” she said as she held a copy of
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I took the book into my room and began to read.
Immediately, I was hooked. Despite the extremely nice summer weather, I sat in my
bed and fell deeper and deeper into McCarthy’s world with the turning of each page.
The story is fairly simplistic. A young boy and his father travel together in a dark,
post-apocalyptic world. They encounter much hardship, but find solace in one
another. Like, The Giving Tree, this novel is ripe with human emotion. I became
genuinely engrossed with the characters and with the metaphysical, overarching
themes of The Road. That day, with the birds chirping outside my window, I stayed
in bed and read the novel in its entirety. From that day on, I have come to enjoy
personal non-academic reading once more.
My fascination with literature has stemmed from its ability to move me
emotionally. Skilled writers are able to transform the seemingly lifeless text into a
dynamic, almost living, thing. With their mastery of language, they are able to craft
pieces of art that can feel as real as the world around me.