In doing research this week, I came across an article written by Gracy Olmstead for the American Conservative on 5 reasons why words matter. At this point in the semester, I had only been able to come up with one example “to connect us to others”, which for the idea of getting to the point is her first reason, the ability to communicate through words makes us human. She goes on to say that any monkey can take a picture with a smartphone but it’s that linguistic connection that makes us human. Her next reason, which the next four I didn’t even consider is, words give expression to the abstract in a way that images cannot. She brings up William Shakespeare’s line from Hamlet “To be or not to be- that is the question”. How could we describe that in an image? Her next reason is words give us a full story, from its context, background, beginning and ending. And the fourth reason connects to the third, the fourth days that it connects us to the other. Our ability to tell someone else’s story. Words connect us to not only being able to connect to others story but also the stories that came before us and the history of our human race. The last reason is because Words awaken our imagination. She gives a wonderful example going back to Shakespeare. She quotes a line from one of his works that says
“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun. (Shakespeare)”
Then says, yes you can take a picture of a sunset or a beautiful waterfall but look at the even greater imagery that comes from reading something like that. Her last image says that writing is like a mirror, an inky, mysterious, beautiful word mirror and those words allow us to reflect but also to look in.