Madzia

Juliana Madzia

Professor Vaughn

Intermediate Composition 2089

19 September 2014

Rediscovering Purpose: A Girl’s Journey From Anne Shirley to Sartre

Growing up, books were as widespread as oxygen atoms in my house, and

probably just as necessary for life, too. From the day that I was born until the time that I

became capable of reading on my own, there was not a day that passed that someone in

my family—my mother, father, grandmother, or grandfather—did not read to me. Floor-

to-ceiling bookshelves lined our living room, basement, and every bedroom. They were

filled with a conglomeration of old, new, fiction, nonfiction, illustrated, poetry-

everything imaginable. It was this atmosphere that shaped my love of reading, which

would eventually come to define the way I acted in all aspects of life and the way I

viewed the world around me.

Although I did not realize it at the time, the primary literacy event of my young

life was my discovery of the book Anne of Green Gables. I do not recall how I first came

upon the book, but I was instantly won over by the brilliant and stubborn red-haired

orphan, Anne Shirley. At the age of six, I visited Prince Edward Island, the Canadian

province in which the book takes place. On Prince Edward Island, Anne became my life.

As Erika Petersen says is true of every one of her interviewees in “Past Experiences and

Future Attitudes in Literacy,” I can recall “with great detail, as if they had happened

yesterday” (194) a seemingly infinite number of moments where I felt like I was living in

the Anne of Green Gables story. I visited the house after which Green Gables had been

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modeled, and imagined myself as Anne as I walked around the yard, around the large

white and green house. I was transfixed by the sun that shone brightly on the lawn and

the smell of lupine flowers that wafted through the air. For a brief spell, I felt like I had

been transported back to the fictional village of Avonlea in the early twentieth century. I

even had the opportunity to taste the bubbly, refreshing raspberry cordial that is such an

integral part of the Anne of Green Gables storyline. In Charlottetown, I saw “Anne of

Green Gables: The Musical” and memorized the lyrics to every song and the name of

every cast member. I bought a straw hat and red-haired, braided wig so that I could even

look just like Anne (Figure 1).

The following three summers were spent in exactly the same way. When I had to

return to Ohio, I lived Anne’s life vicariously through watching the Anne of Green

Gables made-for-TV movie over and over again. There is a scene in the book where

Anne participates in a spelling bee and wins the bee by correctly spelling the word

“chrysanthemum.” I asked my grandfather to put on fake spelling bees, in which I was

the sole participant, and every spelling bee would culminate with me being declared the

winner after correctly spelling the word “chrysanthemum.” The climax of my Anne of

Green Gables passion came when, at the age of seven, I wrote a story titled Anne of

Green Gables: The Continuing Story, in which all of the characters ended up getting

married to other main characters and living happily together for the rest of their lives

(Figure 2). Perhaps I thought that if I looked and acted like Anne, I would naturally pick

up some of her sharp wit and pure intelligence.

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While Anne is surely the most dramatic example, I seemed to immerse myself in

every book that I read throughout my childhood. There was nothing better than sitting for

hours getting lost in a book, any book, and finding ways to connect that book to my own

life. I loved to try to emulate my favorite characters; thus, the books that I chose to read

become an enormous factor in shaping the person that I was to become. These habits also

began to trickle over into my academic life. In order to memorize difficult scientific

processes, I would make up short stories in my head about how each component played

its role in forming the whole, and then connect those ideas to real-life situations in order

to make them seem more tangible and understandable. Once I decided that I wanted to

become a doctor, the act of emulation once again came into play. I envisioned myself in

Figure 2. Lines from Anne of Green Gables written from memory early in elementary school

Figure 1. Visiting Prince Edward Island, dressed as Anne Shirley

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the role of a successful neurosurgeon, and then surrounded myself with opportunities and

situations that would make it possible for me to achieve that goal. These are actions that I

continue to practice to this day, as I progress into more and more advanced science

courses in my college education.

Thinking back over all of the reading that I did during my years of school, I don’t

think that I ever really read with a specific purpose or a goal. I read because I loved the

way I felt when I read. I read books that I thought sounded exciting or intriguing, not

books that I thought would make me smarter or help me out in the future. Perhaps that

was why I found books so magical, because they removed me from the otherwise

focused, competitive life that I lived. During my senior year of high school, however,

something changed. In my mind, I developed this arrogant idea that books not directly

related to what I planned to study in college or do as a future career were not worth my

time. Not that they weren’t good books, but that I, as a future doctor and neuroscientist,

did not have the time to read fictional novels anymore. I stocked my shelves with books

with titles such as A Skeptic’s Guide to the Mind and The Principles of Neural Science.

These were topics that I was genuinely interested in, but I could never fall head over

heels into these books the way that I had always previously been able to. Reading them

seemed like a chore, something that I had to sit down and really focus my attention on.

Whereas most books, regardless of their size and content, had taken me less than a week

to finish in the past, I got stuck on these books for weeks or months, and sometimes

didn’t finish them at all.

After my first year of college, I came to the conclusion that the lofty idea that I

couldn’t read anything other than neuroscience books was completely irrational. I spent a

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month studying in France, and while there I became reintroduced to existential

philosophy. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, existentialism

emphasizes individual existence, freedom, and choice, and takes the view that humans

define their own meaning in life. I had loved this topic when I studied it in my high

school French class, so on a whim I bought Jean-Paul Sartre’s L’existentialisme est un

humanisme (Existentialism and Humanism) from a used book store in Normandy. Sartre

is difficult enough to comprehend in English, so I am not entirely sure why I felt so

compelled to read the book in French. Perhaps it felt more authentic that way. I read the

book voraciously, with a French dictionary in one hand and a pencil in the other, so that I

could take note of unfamiliar words and mark my favorite passages as I read. I envisioned

an old black-and-white version of Sartre himself, sitting in a Parisian café where the

smell of fresh baguettes and espresso wafted through the room, telling me in a thick

French accent all of the ideas that I was reading in his book. This was the kind of reading

that I had been missing for so long, the kind where I could turn page after page without

stopping, read my book while walking up and down the stairs of my house, and continue

thinking about the book long after I had closed it. When I finished reading, I loved the

fact that the corners of the book were bent, the spine was slightly worn, and there were

several coffee stains on the pages. Like a pair of my favorite old running shoes, the book

seemed lived in, and it just felt right. Existential theory struck a chord with me. It didn’t

necessarily change how I viewed the world, but it put solid words to my ideas. Just as

Sherman Alexie spoke of his realization that everyone existed as a separate paragraph but

had common experiences that linked them, I also began “seeing the world in paragraphs”

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(130). The book helped me to put meaning in the world and gave new definition to my

surroundings.

Upon finishing L’existialisme est un humanisme, my mind was once again

stimulated to read the way that it used to. At last, I have learned how to read with a

purpose, but I now know that doesn’t mean I have to solely read books that will directly

benefit my academic knowledge in my field. I see now that every book, whether it is a

romance novel, a philosophical essay, or a compilation of poems, has the capacity to

change my life if I am willing to be receptive to it. One of Sartre’s most important

maxims of existentialism is that nothing has meaning independent of what we choose to

give it, and it is up to each of us to make that meaning. From this I have realized that I

cannot open a book and expect it to transform my world simply because it has a great,

thought-provoking title, any more than I can expect a fantasy novel to be a waste of my

time. Each book that I read is no more and no less than what I make of it and how I

interpret it and apply my own ideas and experiences to it as I read.

Just as I did with Anne of Green Gables so long ago, I can once again become

enveloped in the characters or ideas about which I am reading. I may have shed the red

braided wig that so strongly signified my connection with the Anne of my childhood, but

deep down I am still that same reader. L’existentialisme est un humanisme helped me to

reach within myself and dig out the reader that I have been since that fateful summer on

Prince Edward Island. I read, not because I want to escape from anything in my current

life, but because books allow me to envision future worlds and possibilities that I

otherwise would not know. They show me where I want to go, or at least nudge me in the

right direction.

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Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman. “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me.” Writing about

Writing: A College Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs.

Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2014. 129-131. Print.

Crowell, Steven. "Existentialism." Stanford University. Stanford University, 23 Aug.

2004. Web. 17 Sept. 2014.

Peterson, Erika. “Past Experiences and Future Attitudes in Literacy.” Writing about

Writing: A College Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs.

Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2014. 191-197. Print.

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