Sacks writes a lot in this book about not only the history of the English alphabet letters but also about how that history affects the way we see these letters. This is what I found the most interesting in his writing. Though letters are just shapes we have created, the history we have with them makes us associate them with certain things. For example, an S can be associated with snakes, and thus may be considered a bit evil or scary. Why? The biblical history behind snakes (Lucifer disguised as a snake tricks Eve), and just in general snakes are commonly thought to be scary. Snakes also make a “sssss” sound, and the word “snake” itself starts with an S.
I specifically find it interesting that we associate not only objects or animals with letters but also personality traits as if they are alive. Similarly to S being seen as evil, A may be associated with importance or pride because it is the first letter in the alphabet. L might be considered a kind letter, U as shy, and so on. This is an interesting phenomenon that not only occurs in letters but really anything. The color red is associated with anger/frustration, blue with sadness or coldness. And while red is anger, pink is not, even though pink comes from red. Pastel colors are considered calm while neons are powerful. And even further, people might associate words with colors. Maybe Monday is yellow while Friday is blue. For some, the word “moist” causes a visceral reaction.
My question is, why do we do this? There are a few reasons, one I have already mentioned, which is that we correlate the history of when things are used to what they are. However, that does not make sense when we see colors as having emotions, does it? Not entirely, but you may notice they correlate with other things besides their history. For example, many people’s faces turn red when they are mad. We associate yellow with happiness because of the warmth of the yellow sun, blue with sadness because of cold weather.
In fact, knowing what color we associate with certain emotions can be very helpful in therapeutic means! Many find green to be calming, so it is suggested to paint your walls green if you suffer from anxiety. Bright colors might help with depression and so on.
All this is to say that I find the concept of personifying inanimate things to be very interesting, and I think Sacks discusses it quite a lot in his writing. For that reason, I wanted to go into a bit more depth about it. I specifically like how Sacks has honed in on these specific letters, not even words, which in the end made me want to research this idea further.