Developed Literacies
Hayden Faust
ERH-101
11/28/16
Word Count: 1137
In a way, it is mainly my literacies that led me to choose VMI. It seems, in my life and in the lives of others, that one’s ideals, morals, and values are directly connected to their literacies in some way. I know that for me, in some cases my literacies affected my outlook on life and my values, and in some cases, it was the opposite scenario. I sought out things that I thought I would be interested in, and became literate in them. When I think if my literacies long term, two major factors come to mind immediately as things that had a major impact on my life: my family and its’ history, as well as the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. When I was a child and later a teenager growing up, it was primarily my family who influenced me and effected what I read, and Atlas Shrugged is the first time that I made a choice to read something in my interest and it heavily affected my entire worldview. That is why I believe that in my early life, my family was my biggest literacy sponsor, in my adulthood it has been Ayn Rand, and these sponsors have made me a big producer and consumer of knowledge regarding my culture and heritage as well as society and social issues.
Generalizing my family, however, is not entirely accurate. Each of my family members has had a unique impact on me. For starters my father’s father, whom I called ‘Opa’, kept a lot of artifacts and records from our family’s past, and often would regale me with stories about his father and grandfather when I went to visit him. He would drive me past the barber shop my great grandmother used to own, or show me pictures of old family gatherings in the backyard and carefully point out and name everyone in the photograph, always adding a little explanation of what they did for work and specifically how I was related to them. He would specifically talk about my great grandfather and great-great grandfather and the sacrifices that they made, how they started with nothing and worked to provide their children with a better life. I saw for myself how him and my father had continued my tradition, and I decided at a young age that I would not be the one to end it. He also spoke of my German heritage, how my family are direct descendants of German nobles. I still have a picture of the family crest that he gave me. Since then, early on, I began reading books he gave me and in my free time reading about both German culture and history as well as the European Middle Ages. I wanted to get a good idea of where I came from, and what my ancestors were like. This led to me developing a significantly stronger connection to my family and heritage than most of my peers seemed to have, and I saw myself as destined to be a hardworking family-man like the Fausts had been for generations before. Thus I often encounter situations where I am more aware of the culture of my people and my family, and even history in general, than most of my peers. I have taken it upon myself to learn more about these topics, reading more about them in my free time, and find myself talking about it more and more with my peers. It is a topic that excites me, that I love sharing, and even hearing about the topic of this paper made my ears perk up. I have become a producer and consumer of cultural and historical knowledge through the influence of my family, and this is a trait I hope I never lose.
I was turned onto an entirely different realm of interest my freshman year of high school when we were assigned Fahrenheit 451. I fell in love in dystopian novels, and eventually read Anthem by Ayn Rand. I liked her writing style, and eventually worked up to reading Atlas Shrugged, her eleven hundred and forty-three-page magnum opus. I read the book over the course of six months, the whole time absolutely enthralled by it. I clung to every page, and was absorbed by every character and location. But nothing resonated with me more than the lessons that lied at the core of the novel. The mantra of everyone being free to work for themselves and collect the fruits of their labor, of those who worked hard being the ones who succeeded, spoke to me like nothing had. The framework for these lessons being shown is a hypothetical world in the process of falling apart, not from any major disaster, but from people Rand labels as “looters”, people who gain power and money off the backs of others, people who create nothing and passively destroy everything. This fictional world also spoke to me, as I saw a lot of parallels between it and the one that I live in. I began to become a lot more concerned and interested in social sciences and politics, and ever since I spend my free time either listening to podcasts, watching videos, or reading news articles about current events and politics. I also can’t keep my mouth shut about these topics, and will constantly talk to my friends or anyone who will engage me in conversation about current events and what they think of the state of the nation and world. Other’s view on these events always fascinate me, as they themselves are parts of these issues and social systems. And as Donald Murray argues, all writing is autobiographical. He claims that no matter the purpose or reason for writing, the same personal voice is present constantly. I think this claim is very accurate, as I find myself constantly looking behind the text to try and analyze the writer and their personal opinions that leak into the writing and their hidden biases. These realizations have made me a large consumer and producer of knowledge about these issues, as I am constantly listening to more information from people, drawing new information from everything I read, and talking to others about my views and thoughts.
This combination of my literacies of both the past through my heritage and culture as well as the present and future through politics and current events has, in my opinion, made me pretty well rounded. I am constantly drawing connections through these related literacies and using the information I gather to form my own opinion about events, people, and ideas. I am proud of what my literacies have made me, and my love of debate and conversation will ensure that I remain a large producer of knowledge about whatever literacies I maintain throughout my life, especially about my heritage and society.
Secondary Source:
Murray, Donald M. “All Writing is Autobiography.” College Composition and communication 42.1 (1991):66-74. Print.
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