The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society

There were 3 words that I would say were the underlying feelings of illiterate people that the author, Jonathan Kozol, was trying to portray: Confusion, Fear, and Distrust.

Throughout the story, the author tries to show how illiterate people are left in panic and confusion. They are not able to understand anything from a restaurant menu to medication instructions. I like how he relates how they feel to a dream he has had. "I find that I am in a railroad station of a large department store within a city that is utterly unknown to me and where I cannot understand the printed words." (204) I feel I wouldn't be able to read street signs or names of stores if I were somewhere like China, where they have different symbols. I feel that is the way I could relate to the struggles of an illiterate person. It has to be hard to go through life not being able to be independent, to read and write on my own. Not being able to understand or be independent would leave illiterate people in confusion.

It hit me hard when I got to the part with an interview of an illiterate person describing the fear they must live with everyday. The illiterate person describes the danger of being lost and the possibility of a family member getting hurt. Because they cannot read the street signs, by the time they figure out where they are to tell the 911 dispatcher, the family member could be dead. (204) When I was little, I had that fear when I didn't know my own address and to have that fear your whole life must be so hard.

A lot of the paragraphs dealing with having other people read letters, bills, and statements to them, had a lot of distrust be the illiterate people. They depend on others for these things, but there is no real way to find out if the people helping them aren't scamming them. "...you end up trusting no one and suspecting everyone of possible deceit." I think that kind or paranoia would add to even more stress in an illiterate person's life.

Side note- Over all I thought the information given, gave a true sense of the struggle that illiterate people go through daily. However, I thought it was a very boring read because it was in a list type of format and didn't add a lot of variety to the way the story was written.