Literature has a unique power to unite us, to tell stories of the human experience, and to transport us to faraway places and distant times. Literature has the capacity to bring us back to our primordial beginnings, to help us gain insight into our feelings and thoughts, and to teach us lessons that we need to learn in order to better understand our world and our place in it. At its core, literature is storytelling, and storytellers have been a part of society since prehistory. Through literature, humans have been able to communicate shared experiences and to impart knowledge to generations who have followed. Literature creates an oral history, a sense of communal identity, and helps to provide understanding of how life is lived in different cultures and eras. Literature is also a great source of inspiration and creativity. Through poetry, novels, short stories, and plays, writers are able to express the joys, heartaches, dreams, and hopes of the human condition. By living vicariously through literature, readers can marvel at the greater aspects of humankind and explore emotions of joy, sorrow, and anger. Literature can open up our hearts and minds to how we feel and how life affects us, both negative and positive. This understanding of ourselves as we relate to each other and our environment can be crucial to our ongoing development as individuals and as a people. No matter the time or place, literature has always been a part of human culture and will undoubtedly remain so in the future. By engaging with literature, we can open our minds to the beauty of the human experience and gain an appreciation for the stories and the lessons they teach.