Fiction has the power to influence us in ways we can hardly imagine. How many of us cried when Dumbledore died? Didn't we feel as exhausted as Sam and Frodo when they were finally rescued on the side of Mount Doom? And who hasn't felt the emptiness of coming back to reality when we've turned the final page?
But fiction makes us think too. And I'm not just talking about the ways our English teachers wanted us to think (although I've found that most of them were right). When we absorb ourselves in a world that's not our own, we can see things that we're otherwise blind to. Maybe some part of this other society works better, maybe it's worse, or maybe we see haunting images of the direction we're going. For me, the most powerful moments of reflection are in those surreal, in-between sections of time after I close the book, but before I rejoin the world.
Literature is not endangered. Television, movies, video games, and even Facebook can never hold the same power as the printed word.
That is why I sit here with my fingers on the keyboard.
"The pen is mightier than the sword."
