speech

here's the speech in my class, it's slightly different than my paper and didn't touch on everything the paper did

In a consumer-driven world, we feel the need to constantly assign values to everything, usually based on material gain. Something is not worthwhile if it doesn’t lead to money, careers, possessions, or status. Obviously this applies to college as well. If a major does not guarantee multiple job offers and a high salary, it is supposedly worthless and unpractical, which is usually where literature falls. Sidney defended his poetry against historians and philosophers, but today we must defend ourselves against Engineers, Businessmen, and Architects, those “practical” majors. But I say this, if engineering and business are the practical side, then Literature is the passionate side. Ask any reasonable person what makes their life worth living, and their answer undoubtedly reverts back to an emotion. The love of family, the joy of skiing, the pride of an accomplishment. Ask them what makes their life miserable, and again the answer revolves around emotions. The pain of a death or break-up, the guilt of a mistake, depression, fear. Intangible things, not material possessions. So if the heights and depths of human existence are demarked by emotions, why are studies that deal with bridges and drain fields and math (the practical) so highly-valued, while literature is not? Literature IS emotion. History tells us that we declared independence in 1776, but we can’t understand the fervor and passion of patriotism without reading Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry. The Civil War was fought to end the cruelty of slavery, but cruelty is just a word until we see the suffering of the slaves through the writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe or Frederick Douglas. We know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, but we can’t imagine their fears, or their hopes, without the insight of the Diary of Anne Frank. Literature gives insight to the human condition like nothing else. It teaches us compassion. It makes us laugh. It makes us cry. It makes us understand the world around us. It gives us hope. And all of these are worth far more than a job at Boeing, or an internship at the Gap.
So, as long as there is laughter, we need literature.
As long as there is adventure, we need literature.
As long as there is suffering, we need literature.
And as long as there is love, we need literature.