J. K. Rowling's Speech Analysis

Reading and the enrichment that comes from it, is continuously diminishing as younger generations give into technology and convenience of quick, simplified language as means of communication. Throughout the speeches of J.K. Rowling, Toni Morrison, and Neil Gaiman, they each touch on the theme of dwindling reading amounts and lack elevated diction within young children and those coming of age. Each of these authors attribute the lessening literacy of rising generations to the denial of the truth to them via restriction to books and language. To continue, it is essential for children to be read to, read themselves, and learn that reading is pleasurable and not to be seen as a task, ensuring that one can understand, or be empathetic, perhaps without experiencing it firsthand, but through a book. J.K. Rowling in her Harvard Address claims that the vital component of humanity is empathy, “Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced.” In agreeance, Neil Gaiman states in his speech stressing how important he feels empathy is as well, “Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.” Empathy

If this is not done, developing children who were not surrounded in literature or access to it could find themselves fitting stereotypes giving in to the convenience of playing the victim until the next generation circles around and the same scenario occurs. Rowling, Morrison, and Gaiman all stress the importance of reading as it allows one to put themselves in another shoe’s, and then apply the same situations to their own life all the while further flourishing as the love for pleasurable reading is a fixation within them to pass on to those of the upcoming