Does literature matter?

Is fiction something that can help improve society? Maybe that is not the thought you got to have in mind to write a good novel. Maybe art is something “beyond good and evil”. Maybe art is something that exists outside the boundaries of past and current moral trends. Of course, that is a possibility. However, that does not prevent us to make question about the relevance of fiction in human lives. So, is fiction good for something more than just amusement or knowledge.

Some time ago, while I was starting my life as a twentish, I decided to build my own private library so I began to spend every penny I earned to buy books. Most of them where novels and short stories. Consequently, in a couple of years I manage to have a humble but not bad collection consisting of one hundred, few more few lees, books in my parents' house. For that amount of books I did not need something bigger than a medium size bookcase. Anyway, one day an aunt that lived abroad came to visit us. She stood for a couple of weeks I think. One morning she was wondering around the house and came to me to ask one of those insignificant questions like “Do you know what time is it?”, I don’t really remember the specific questions, but I was in my room and while she was asking she came across the bookcase. She entered the room, sat in front of the furniture and stare at it quietly. I felt proud. “Finally, someone that can understand the treasure I have here”  —I thought. Then, my aunt changed her glance from the cabinet to me and said: “Is there any good reason to have so many books? I don’t see the point?” It was if like someone had pushed me from the corner of the rooftop in a skyscraper. That statement made me think for a long time about the use of literature. For my aunt, having that quantity of paper in the same place was a sort of waste —of money and time, I guess. She had a point: literature is just fantasy, thus, not related with real life or reality in general. Why should we care about it?

On the other hand, is not easy to simplify things that much. Yes, literature is fantasy, but I understood that the same imagination that is needed to build fiction is also the building block of Culture. In a way, Culture is based in imagination. Every object, commodity, custom, institution, identity, material or immaterial aspect of the world we live in is linked with a symbolic realm. That world is not easy to observe or even to be aware of. That’s where fiction and literature comes in: they make posible to picture the complexity of Culture and humanity by making visible that imaginary landscape. Literature is a way to understand Culture. Furthermore, literature has the power to build stories, that is, ways to name, to understand, to acknowledge the world we live in and in which we discover others, identities like us, people like us, our neighbor, us humans. Literature makes possible to turn into reality things that where not even existing before, or that we where not aware of, like never ending richness of the human diversity, color, texture. So, is fiction something that can help improve society? Yes, every good piece of literature has the power to increase our comprehension of what we are, what we have done, and maybe, of what we should do next to.