There are two main opinions about learning literature. First and more common, that it is very important for developing individuals’ character, and second, that consider literature as wasting time. In this essay below, both views are discussed and my own opinion is given.
A part of people is convinced that literature is essential for character building and there are some reasons. During reading books people are learning automatically (without using additional forces) for such important things as grammar, sentence structure or writing of different words. Furthermore, reading and studying classical literature can improve vocabulary, that is essential for writing your own works or essays. Moreover, learning or reading books which you like can become an improvement for mental health, because it has calming effects and it unloads thoughts, for example, after a long day of work. In addition, if there is told about character, reading some concrete books can make better behavior of people. For example, work of J.R.Tolkien called “The Lord of The Rings”. In those books characters are all (even the villains, except orcs) noble and talking gently using vast vocabulary which can be great opportunity to learn, how to behave and talk in different situations with different kinds of opponents.
Nevertheless, there is the side with opposite opinion. It is asserted that studying literature is wasting time and there are some reasons for such view. Firstly, reading and learning different piece of such art can take pretty long time. Not everyone has enough free time to spend it for this purpose because of other personal issues which have to be solved. Also, not the whole literature that is studied in school or universities is interesting. As an example, can be provided piece of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” which is very long and most of students find this creation boring and useless, despite it is studied in school during the course of international literature.
In conclusion, while I agree with arguments of both views, I lean towards the opinion that learning and reading literature is important for character building of individuals. For instance, I would like to tell how I changed my mind in better side after reading the book of F.Herbert “Dune”. In the novel characters often met different people of various layers of population and the mind of them is analyzed deeply, which gave me understanding of how to behave and talk in reality, how to analyze behavior of myself and how to improve it.