Why Do We Like Reading Sad Things
Why We Should Read Sad Books
written by: Christi Williams, Upper School Teacher
Whenever I try to convince my daughter to read a new volume, the outset question she suspiciously asks me is: "Is information technology sad?" If I say yes, she refuses to read it. And so we have the aforementioned argument we've had countless times. I remind her that all of her favorite books take fabricated her cry. She tells me that she only wants to be entertained. I say that books are about more than than being entertained. She digs her heels in. We accomplish a stalemate.
I've realized after having this interchange multiple times that I genuinely like "sorry books." Those are the ones that I can't look for my daughters to read, the ones that have transformed me and stick with me over time.
What do I mean by "sad books"? I don't mean books that finish in nihilistic despair and get out you feeling powerless in the face of evil. I don't mean melodramatic books that ruthlessly tug on your emotions and enumerate ane tragedy after another to keep y'all turning the pages. I do mean books that don't saccharide-coat existence, but rather draw you into the realities of life. I practice mean books that aren't afraid to evidence you real suffering and how characters respond to it. I exercise mean books that deal with decease and radical sacrifice.
Why are distressing books worth reading? Many would list reasons to avoid them. Ane could argue that life is difficult enough every bit it is, and we don't need stories to bring us even further downwardly in spirit. Further, why would we want our kids to read sad books and be weighed down by knowledge of the burdens of the world? They accept such pure hearts. Why darken that purity? Finally, we like books to be fun and relaxing, and so why open ourselves up to a volume that makes u.s. uncomfortable with our bloodshed and forces us to deal with pain we've pushed into the groundwork?
Well, I have a few reasons. First, deplorable books have us through hardship and suffering in stories before we have to go through them in real life. They give u.s. emotional exercise for hereafter grief. When I read Bridge to Terabithia in elementary schoolhouse, I was thrilled by the magical world created by the ii lonely friends, the way their friendship gave them strength, and I was devastated at the finish when one of the friends suddenly dies. But and then, a year later, my family moved cities, and I was suddenly lone. Every bit a outcome of the move, I never saw my best friend again. Information technology was like she had died. It was this book I returned to for help through the grief. Some other book that trained me to be prepared for future grief was Where the Red Fern Grows. The male child in this story trains ii coonhound puppies that become the world to him. He loses them in the end to expiry. When I read this volume, I had 2 dogs that were like family to me. I hadn't processed what it would be like for them to die until I read this story. I wept for the coonhounds as if they were my own. Then a couple years later, when one of my dogs did die of old historic period, I was heartbroken, merely I was also more ready to face that tragedy and grapple with the emotions that came with information technology.
Second, sad books can be skillful for us if they help us develop empathy and compassion for others. The Giving Tree was the first volume that did that for me. When you are a child, it is piece of cake to exist self-centered and forget how much your parents sacrifice for y'all. That book taught me to really notice that like the tree in the book, my parents gladly gave upwardly parts of themselves to me and my siblings everyday. I call back being determined to be more than grateful to them than the boy is to the tree. In loftier school, the tragic Les Miserables had a profound touch on me. It taught me nearly the suffering of the poor and petty criminals. Information technology taught me that "those who practise not weep, practise not see." It taught me that to dear some other means to suffer and sacrifice for them. Jean Valjean taught me the power of grace and forgiveness.
Third, lamentable books tin can assistance us grapple with the problem of evil. The radical suffering in the world is one of the principal reasons people give up their conventionalities in God. How could a good God permit such suffering? Sorry books put that radical suffering front and center and force us to inquire how to reconcile it with the sovereignty of a loving God. 2 books that did that for me were The Hiding Identify and Brothers Karamazov. Both books opened my eyes to how evil the world can become, forced me to grapple realistically with that evil, and so pointed to God's love and the need for faith in the midst of it.
Fourth, sad books make united states aware of social injustice and specific evils in the earth so that we can fight confronting it. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry and Invisible Human being show the reality of racism and what inequalities minorities suffer. When I finished these books, I was determined to do what I could to fight for racial reconciliation.
Fifth, if nosotros are in the midst of suffering, sad books are cathartic and help united states know we are non lone. I was going through intense hardship equally a kid when I read The Velveteen Rabbit. I had a lot of unrecognized pain and grief in my heart at that time, and I could cry for the abandoned rabbit in the story because I could not cry for myself. And even though it's a children'due south volume, I read The Adventures of Edward Tulane every bit an adult at a very hard time in life, and I was finally able to permit myself to weep over my circumstances every bit I cried for the main character.
Finally, the Bible itself is filled with sadness. In that location is a whole book defended to it chosen Lamentations. Christ is the human being of sorrows. The Scriptures tell us to weep with those who cry. Even more than, Paul writes that suffering produces not despair, but promise. It leads us to class a graphic symbol that can endure pain and persevere through it to encounter redemption on the other side.
These are merely a few of the many reasons sad books can be then powerful in our lives.
Source: https://tcshouston.org/why-we-should-read-sad-books/
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