Every year new, as well as well-recognized novels appear on the shelves of stores, yet the competition which they face from other forms of entertainment is hard to ignore. One of the opinions is that novels are no longer relevant, and their role in society today belongs to TV shows (Kirsch and Hamid). Nevertheless, such a viewpoint still does not change the fact that novels should remain a valuable form of art for people because they enable them to develop their imagination and critical thinking.
Novels usually have a fairly large size in terms of the number of pages, especially when compared to short stories, and thus contain many details. At the same time, they have limited visual content, such as images based on the scenes described in them. As a result, novels let people imagine the setting and characters’ looks themselves. Movies and TV shows, in their turn, rely only on the visual form and thus simply show a certain story to the viewer, preventing them from using their imagination.
Essentially, novels constitute a valuable form of art because they let the reader participate in the story. Moreover, it is possible to say that “to read a novel is to engage in… single act of pleasure-based data transfer” (Kirsch and Hamid). In other words, novels let writers share certain ideas and enable millions of readers to think of them and then develop their own understanding of them. Therefore, by reading novels, people enhance their ability to be creative and think independently, as well as critically. It is telling that in Brave New World, the lower classes of people such as Delta are preconditioned to hate books (Huxley 22). Essentially, Aldous Huxley highlights the idea that a lack of reading prevents people from forming their own independent thinking.
Novels must be considered valuable for people because they help them to become more creative and develop critical thinking through the use of their imagination. Books let readers interact with them by visualizing certain aspects of the narrative in their minds. Moreover, through novels, authors can present their ideas, while readers can learn about them and develop further. As a result, novels enable people to improve their independent perspective on certain phenomena and gain critical thinking skills.
Works Cited
Huxley, Aldous. Wuthering Heights. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.
Kirsch, Adam, and Mohsin Hamid. “Are the New ‘Golden Age’ TV Shows the New Novels?” The New York Times, 2014, Web.