What Literature Teaches About Different Cultures

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Our world is full of hundreds of cultures, scattered all over the place, but when we can’t travel to every country on earth, how can we find out about these cultures. We can learn a tremendous amount about a culture, just through studying their literature. First of all, we can learn a great amount about their basic culture; their everyday life. We can also learn what kind of society they live in now, and what kind they did live in hundreds of years ago. And finally we can learn about their history simply from studying their culture. Culture isn’t only defined as a country’s history or what kind of society they live in, it’s also about simple things like what you eat, or what kind of bed you have, or what you believe in.

Culture can include education, which we can also learn about through literature. In the movie “A Shower” it showed the boy walking tremendous distances just to get to school, not like in Canada where you can just catch a bus. The boy and the girl in the movie had school bags that looked like the equivalent to a Canadian briefcase; they didn’t carry them on their back. In the film the boy’s mother said “Saturday is a half day” meaning that Korean kids go to school on Saturdays, that is a part of their culture that is extremely different than ours. In Korea they take education very seriously, and the kids respect their teachers and their schooling; they also respect their history, it’s not just a subject taught in school like it is in Canada.

Just from reading some Korean poems, or stories, or watching some Korean movies we can very quickly learn about their everyday life. Korean life, and culture, is very focused on nature; from the foods they eat to where they want to go when they retire. In the film “A Shower” ...

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...ledge regarding Korean Culture, Sijo Poems started being written during the Chosŏn Dynasty, so they reflect Confucianism, these poems are still popular and are still being written to this day.

Just from studying a country’s literature we can learn a great amount about their basic culture; their everyday life. We can also learn what kind of society they live in now, and what kind they did live in hundreds of years ago. And finally we can learn about their history simply from studying their culture and literature. People might think that we can only learn about a culture if we visit that country and we can learn nothing about that culture from studying their literature, this however is completely incorrect, a country’s literature is the key to learning about a country’s culture. We can learn a tremendous amount about a culture, just through studying their literature.

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