Although the two formal essays In Defense of Literature and On Visiting Bookshops share contrasting settings, audiences, and perspectives, both essays have similar ideologies. Accordingly. In Defense of Literature identifies the problem with naming literature as useless, while On Visiting Bookshops proposes the effects of the solution - components of literature. Despite the differences, the texts support one another by providing an alternate perspective which leads to a deeper understanding that literature is as important, if not more than other societal values because it offers us a passage to freedom, from ourselves and from society. The literature’s significance has accentuated the concept of literature as “more than an ornament” (Berry…show more content… Both authors believed that only through the comparison would the reader give a second thought about continuing to read about enslavement. For the purpose of escaping oneself, one must develop a deep emotional understanding and restore humanity within. Berry embodies humans as robots and “efficient [integers] of the economy” (Berry 1) to describe the outcome of the“ lack of a critical consciousness of language [that was] safe enough in primitive societies ” (2) as enslaving and degrading oneself as less than human. On Visiting Bookshops proposes the solution, obtaining the unexplored emotional clarity and connection of finding a book that “ is like falling in love” (Morley 2). Only books are capable to take “us home to the bedtime of a child” (2), the most human one will ever be. Simultaneously obtaining freedom for oneself and obtaining freedom from society by changing one’s perspective, is the confusing journey many choose to
