Summary Of Alberto Manguel's The Library As Survival

Throughout the essay “The Library as Survival”, author Alberto Manguel liberally uses exemplification in order to share with his readers the idea of his own personal library as a mirror for humanity. Like humanity, Manguel believes that books portray the injustice, loss, hope, and passage of time that human beings go through. The catalyst for his thoughts on the subject matter is the well-worn prayer book that he recovers and describes using humanlike words, but that is not where it stops. Manguel also creates many distinctively different narratives using strong, historical imagery and emotional appeals that are combined to expound upon his argument. While most of them do tie into his main analogy in some way, it is truly in his providing an abundance of literary examples that he conveys the importance of books as a means of surviving an often-harsh life. Manguel uses the over twenty different literary references in the essay to show …show more content…
He repeatedly uses the word “escaped” to describe his books in addition to the word “survival” that is even included in the title. These are words that people often associate with humans who have made it through a perilous situation or who were imprisoned in some way. By doing this, he puts an emphasis on the book, not as objects, but as something that has endured on its own in an anthropomorphized version of history. He also makes sure, at the beginning of the essay, to include the prayer book’s origins, which helps the reader to understand where it came from and why it should be included into what the author says is a library full of books that “holds the history of its survival.” The result is that the reader can easily relate the idea of a book as a conveyance of human emotion because in their mind, the books have suffered much like the people in the stories they