On the Implications of Descriptions in Literature

Fiery tendrils of agony run up his arm, burning him from the fingertip to the innermost parts of his body. He wants to cry, he wants to scream, but this isn’t the type of sudden pain that warrants such a dramatic reaction. His agony has been a part of him for as long as he can remember, a lifelong companion that wishes upon him only the worst. It hurts like hellfire, yet at the same time, the longevity of the pain has numbed it, as though the fire has burned him into ice.

No matter how purple my prose is written, the fact is that this is a passage describing chronic joint and muscle pain. That’s all.

Life is astonishingly disappointing. We write and we draw and we animate, but at the end of the day, the imagery that we create often becomes much more vivid than the actual event itself.

Of course, perhaps it’s simply a matter of perception. Everything becomes less interesting the second time you do it, and most things lose their appeal completely when you do them everyday. Perhaps the regularity with which we experience everyday life has made us lose interest in it, which is why when we see it presented in a different form, such as through literature, it seems like a completely new and interesting event.

Still, I hold firm on the stance that this kind of vivid imagery only serves to romanticize everyday events in a way that makes them unrealistic. However, I am certainly not opposed to this kind of romanticization, if my own writing pieces show anything.

Vivid imagery, when done well, can make any situation seem incredibly poetic, even if the experience itself is extremely mundane. If you saw a person waiting at the train station, it would seem fairly normal. You wouldn’t see it as anything poetic, because there’s nothing particularly special about a person waiting at a train station. However, through art and literature, one can turn this scene into a poetic illustration.

This scene seems extremely mundane, and outside of literature, it probably would be. However, one could turn the person, or the train station, into symbols for countless ideals, or use overly dramatic descriptions to turn the scene into something else.

Thus, it can be concluded that vivid imagery in literature only serves to over romanticize an event, not accurately describe it.

This kind of overly romantic depiction can be seen in all forms of storytelling, from written works to illustrated works and even films. One could argue that this is problematic, as it results in hyperrealism - when the story based on the real event becomes even more real than the event itself, and thus people begin to base their expectations for life on the story, rather than reality itself. However, I don’t believe that the existence of hyperrealism is a problem.

Things lose their appeal when they are done repeatedly. This applies to many, many things. Living life, too, begins to become a hassle when you are forced to do it every single day.

But look at that. Instead of saying “life gets boring,” the above phrasing makes even boredom and depression seem so much more poetic. Perhaps that becomes romanticization of mental illness, but is romanticization such a bad thing? If whether or not we enjoy life is based solely on perception, then isn’t this kind of romanticization the ultimate method for achieving a positive view on life?

Don’t get me wrong; I have long since fallen in love with this thing we call escapism. If given the option, I wouldn’t ever leave my room. I’d lock myself in my own world, surrounded by nothing but myself and the dim glow of my computer screen, experiencing reality through the vast expanse of the digital world and my own thoughts. But romanticization in literature isn’t such a bad thing, is it? It allows us to at least think of our everyday activities as poetic, so that the monotony of the everyday doesn’t drive us all insane.

Literature teachers are constantly preaching the need to dig through the depths of the work, as though the author’s mind is an infinite space of creativity and higher level thinking. As an amateur writer myself, I’ve always disagreed with this method of teaching. At the end of the day, writers (and creators of all types) are humans, just like the rest of us. They eat and sleep and breathe, just like you and me. Teachers tend to place these people on pedestals, creating this great divide between the creators and consumers of the pieces. At the end of the day, however, I think that all creators, as with the rest of us, are just trying to keep themselves sane in this world of chaos.

I recently watched an anime called Blue Period, which walks us through the journey of a high schooler finding meaning to life through art. In one scene, colours explode out of the canvas as the protagonist paints, almost like a scene from an action anime rather than slice of life. These kinds of depictions are obviously unrealistic, but I suppose that this is a valid method to visualize emotions and sensations that can’t be depicted simply using pixels on a computer screen.

The protagonist himself is no one special, but the way in which he describes his insecurities and negative traits is incredibly poetic, which makes these “bad” things seem artistic rather than “bad.” It’s things like these that demonstrate the appeal of the arts - storytelling makes everyday events and mundane characters seem almost fantastical, which makes the burden of everyday life just a little more bearable.

My writing style throughout this piece, and throughout many of my other pieces, may seem overly sophisticated or condescending, but that, too, is just a matter of trying to make my existentialism seem a little more poetic lest I go insane. Truthfully, about halfway through this piece, I forgot what I was trying to write. I’d thought of an idea that seemed very coherent after watching Blue Period, but it’s since slipped my mind. Hence, the second half of this ramble is all just nonsense that I made up on the spot. I think that it shows, in some cases, where I went on a tangent. Alas, I ought to write ideas down before I start getting all prose-y.

Still, I think that the sudden change in style in the last two paragraphs reflects my views on literature, and even the rest of the world. Things may seem beautiful and artistic on paper, but at the end of the day, real life tends to be incredibly mundane and disappointing.

I was going to make a poetic and artistic ending, but I’ve lost that train of thought, too.

(Oh, also, I did a little sketch that was meant to be the thumbnail for this post, but Pubray didn’t let me format it the way I wanted, so here it is)