"Reading can be part of an ongoing life program, empowering the reader to rethink present coping strategies, to try out new behaviours, new moves."- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 99
Reading empowers all of us. We can see how characters have dealt with situations and what consequences sprang forth from their decisions. Thus, in the future, if we come across a similar situation or predicament, we have already had a little bit of a rehearsal in how to deal with it. That is only one way that reading can help us.
Gold thinks that we should read to also help us cope with things that have already happened. We can identify with characters and thus be removed from our own situation slightly.
As you can see from the label cloud on the sidebar, I have extensively quoted Joseph Gold here. His ideas about story and literature really speak to human experience and I am glad that I can share them with you here.
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