FREE ESSAY ON WHY PEOPLE WRITE?

WHY PEOPLE WRITE?

Why People Write ? 
People write for many reasons. They write to educate, , and to entertain to express 
their feelings of emotions of joy or sadness, also to preserve history
In Maya Angelou's story "Graduation" in Fields of Reading she teaches us about 
racism in the south in the 1940's. 
Angelou writes about how schools in the south were segregated. Black students 
were deprived of resources to enable students to learn. While schools were endowed with 
all the resources needed for a prominent education. 
They were going to have the newest 
microscopes and chemistry equipment 
for their laboratory.1
Not only does Maya Angelou write about lack of resources in the black schools 
she also writes that even after the students graduated that they merely going to be 
carpenter, athletes and entertainers.
…and our boys ( the girls weren't even 
on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses
and Joe Louises.2
Maya Angelou is not the only writer who wrote to educate her readers. Prince 
Modupe who wrote The Royal African, educated people about his culture, his religion 
and how power among his people was passed down through women.
Prince Modupe tells us about how his courage was tested by the elders by fighting 
with leopards. this is the way a youths courage was tested by the elders of the 
community.
I am that youth whose courage was 
tested in hand to hand combat with 
a leopard.3
Prince Modupe also talks about how everything is passed down through the 
women from generation to generation. These things consisting of property, rights, and 
even the succession to the throne.
.Our nations system was matriarchal. 
Grandfather sat the throne because there
was no female successor for the office in 
his mother's family…descended through 
women.4
Another writer who writes to educate is Martin Luther King . He writes about 
racism and about non-violence in the United States in the 1960's. King speaks of 
liberalism and neo-orthodoxy. 
King says that these two theories are inadequate. Man needs a reason as much as \
he needs God. Liberalism was too sentimental concerning human nature and that it leaned 
toward a false idealism. On the other hand he says that neo-orthodoxy fell as the mood of

anti-rationalism and semi-fundamentalism , ( stressing a narrow biblicism).
While I saw neo-orthodoxy as a helpful
corrective for a sentimental liberalism,…
If liberalism was too optimistic…
neo-orthodoxy was too pessimistic. 5 
People also write to entertain, whether it be a funny quote or a full comedy to 
make people laugh or to keep people interested to continue reading.
One Hundred Years of Solitude written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a great 
example of people writing to entertain. In this story he talks about a person by the name

of Arcadio Buendia and a gypsy by the name of Malquiades. Buendia is stated to be not 
trustworthy of gypsies.
But Jose Arcadio Buendia, at that time 
Did not believe in the honesty of gypsies.6
In One Hundred Years of Solitude. Marquez writes about a man who practically 
gives up everything he owns to invent things from inventions from the gypsies in which 
Buendia did not trust.
Not only do authors write to entertain and to educate they also write to express 
feelings of pain or joy. Anne Frank in her diary tells us about her struggls and pains 
during the Holocaust. Not only do we know that we also feel for the struggle in living in

an attic with the rest of her family. Anne Franks also talks about having no friends and

the only real friend that she had was a diary, one of the reasons for this is because she

says that paper was patient 
Paper has more patience than people.7