Literature and Imagination Make Democracy Work

• How can literature influence the way we think about politics or society?
• What impact can literature impact the way people participate in democracy?

This lesson is designed to fit into one 50-minute class period and includes:

• 3 activities
• 1 audio 
• 1 reading

Share this prompt with students and ask them to respond in their journals: Think of a novel, memoir, or short story you have read—in or outside school—that helped you to see something differently. Describe the characters, setting, or plot and then explain how those details shifted your thinking. What did you see, understand, or believe after reading the work that you didn’t before?

To get students started, think about offering an example from your own experience. After they write, students can share their thoughts with a partner. Explain that the rest of the lesson will explore how the literature we read can influence the way we think in ways that are meaningful for us not only personally, but also as citizens and members of a democratic society.

Introduce who Azar Nafisi is by using the information from the Overview section of this lesson. Play Azar Nafisi on Literature and Democracy and ask students to jot down words and phrases that help them understand why Nafisi values imagination and literature so highly.

Discuss the audio recording using some of the following questions:

• What words and phrases did students write down as they listened? What might Azar Nafisi mean by “imagination”? Why does she believe that literature and imagination are important?
• In the audio recording, Nafisi speaks of how literature and imagination allow us to “transcend boundaries.” What does this mean? What kinds of boundaries can literature help us to cross? Has reading a work of literature ever given you the sense that you were crossing a boundary of some kind? (Students might refer to the journal entries they made at the beginning of the lesson.) According to Nafisi, what do “great writers” do in their work? How does she use the work of Jane Austen as an example of “great” writing?
• What does this kind of writing have to do with democracy? How might great novels shape the thinking of those who read them?

Read The Republic of Imagination (excerpt) together with your students. In this excerpt, Nafisi discusses the role of literature and imagination in repressive states like Iran and in democracies like the United States.

Discuss the excerpt using any of the following questions:

• Why does Nafisi say that imagination, literature, and literacy are so important to people living under repressive regimes? Why might people be willing to risk punishment to read banned books or listen to banned music?
• Nafisi says that fiction is an “antidote” to conformity in all kinds of societies. What does she mean?
• What does she mean by an “inner self”? How can literature help readers to develop an “inner self”? What’s the connection between having an “inner self” and being a responsible citizen of one’s country and the world?

In both the audio and the reading, Azar Nafisi argues that literature and imagination are central to democracy. After hearing her words and discussing them with your classmates, how would you summarize her argument? Do you agree? How might reading literature change how we think about and act towards others? How might it influence how one participates in a democracy? Is reading itself an act of participation?