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LITR 4632: Literature of the Future  |
Student Midterms 2011: Sample Essay 2 Excerpts
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Valerie Mead, The Frightening Prevalence of Illiteracy in
Future Literature
As a self
proclaimed bibliophile and a future teacher of literature, the idea of
illiteracy that is constantly brought up throughout our assigned readings of
future literature frightens and disturbs me.
I believe that being able to read and write are not just necessary for a
person, but crucial, and that literacy is a cornerstone of a society.
If these elements are lost, it is just a downward spiral of regression
and decline, setting the human race back by hundreds of years.
Out of all of the topics presented during class lectures and assigned
readings, I feel that this one is the most necessary for discussion as it is the
most feasibly realistic and can very easily happen to us in the near future, and
the results of widespread illiteracy would affect many different areas and would
be devastating beyond belief.
Because a great
deal of future literature narratives are apocalyptic in some sense, the picture
they paint of the world is undoubtedly grim.
In a post-apocalyptic world, there is no room for learning to read and
write; there is only room for survival (which also brings up the evolutionary
narrative and the idea of “survival of the fittest”).
However, the fact that so many authors and theorists project the idea of
widespread illiteracy like it is an unavoidable fact in the future frankly
concerns me. It seems to be one of
the first things to leave a society, which is shown in
The Parable of the Sower and “Stone
Lives,” where an apocalypse has recently transpired and yet so many people are
already illiterate. I understand
that the world has undergone drastic changes, but I would think that with all
the wealth of information that books hold about people in similar situations in
the past that more people would try to remain literate in order to succeed in
this new world. Though some do
this, like Lauren in Parable, many
others in the book do not, and it was said in “Stone Lives” that reading and
writing were considered obsolete and pretty much pointless.
Deeming such important methods of communication and information gathering
pointless seems not only ludicrous to me, but seemed to hurt me on a personal
level that I cannot quite explain.
