Books and Bombs

This past week in class we have spent a lot of time focusing on our paper defining what literature is to us. Everyone has a different view point on what actually is literature. Must it be only words, is a T.V. or movie script literature, or is even the T.V. show or movie itself literature. Literature is a very broad topic that I like to think of as anything with artistic qualities and it has to use written words. I actually find this to compare very closely to varying types of explosives.

People use the word bomb to encompass everything that goes boom and is designed to hurt people. I choose a broader range, anything that explodes, releases an incendiary, or gas activated by a trigger mechanism. We can think of different types of literature subdividing like types of bombs. Some are very powerful stories that fly by in a second but they leave a lasting impact. This what we consider to be many of the great works of literature. They are usually big thick books that feel like you're carrying around a ton of bricks. These books are the old classics that just carry a lot of weight and description, and ideas in them. We can also see the same evolution of books as we can explosives. First the big powerful bombs just meant to tear everything apart, and then the incendiary which are quick burning fast paced and exciting. That is what the next era of great literature became. From the big dense books came more exhilarating faster paced books that keep your attention much better. These still continue and have become a mainstay of writing nowadays, but there are also the books that deal with deeper issues. These books like gas focus on your brain. These kinds of books are for a different kind of pleasure, one that causes you to think about real things. It's more than just trying to figure out a mystery novel; the fun is in seeing the problems we face in reality and trying to thin of ways to fix those. Literature and bombs are more closely related than you would think.