Personal Narrative: Ignorance In Literature

As a child, I remember laying on my twin-sized bed. On one side, all my stuffed animals lined up by size and importance, then me and my mother on the other. Each night, smelling like strawberry shampoo, I would line up my cotton menagerie, wiggle under the covers, and rest my head on my pillow, as my mother told me fantastic myths and legends whilst braiding my damp hair. I drifted off to sleep on the ebb and flow of my mother’s intonation. To a childhood me, the power of story was merely a way to fall asleep, to be carried off to another realm on the words of my mother. This ritual continued into elementary school, but abruptly stopped. As small hands and effervescent voices began to experience books that lacked hues and put my glasses to
Books began to slowly peel back the intricate layers of life, and expose the putrid and corrupt. This is when literature began to change my perspective. I had always believed all people were inherently virtuous, that wicked behavior like murder, kidnapping, and deception were almost fairytales in their own like, vile but fictitious. Call it ignorance, but I was a child. Seeing the world behind rose colored glasses made me content, and I tried desperately to keep my universe of giant food and kaleidoscopic skies controlled merely by symphony alive. Like a sunflower that grew with my five-pointed stars toward the sun, I was plucked from that world. It did not help that during this period in my life I was finally learning about world history: plagues, sackings, mass murders, and my grandma had fallen a victim to cancer as well. In retrospect, the colorless and wretched books that I read during this period in my life, fortified a backbone within my being. I started to see those same debased books through a different light. I began to read The Diary of Anne Frank, and I was “Kitty”. Through me, Anne’s story could live on. Her struggle moved me in ways not many books have. I began to see stories in this way. I started to see books as a way for the narrator to speak through to me, to tell me that this happened to them, fictitious or not, and to let their story live on, to let their story impact and change