Does literature benefit us?

In the university, there are so many different kinds of courses, including physical sciences, math, languages and arts. Most of my friends and I are taking sciences now, but few of my friends are taking art history and drawing now. Some of students argue that art is useless and will not make any improvement for our society, so we should learn more practical knowledge which likes computer science, electric engineering and accounting. However, I can hardly agree with them. Although I am taking math and computer science now, I still think art and liberal can make lots progress for us. Looking back in the famous literature in the world, we can know that sometimes white lie can save people’s life from O’ Henry’s “The Last Leaf” and Jules Verne’s imagination in his novels help scientists to invent new technologies.
Looking at the story called “The Last Leaf” by O’ Henry. In the novel, the artists, Sue and Johnsy, set up their studio together in an apartment where an odd man Old Behrman, a failure in art, also lives in. Unfortunately, pneumonia, which touched many people and spread rampantly, smites Johysey. Moreover, Johysey’s situation is so terrible that her chance to get better is very little unless she had hope. What opposite is, Johysey stares at the ivy tree with more and more leaves falling down day after day, thinking pessimistically that she will leave when the tree lost its last leaf. This “goosey” thought shocks Old Behrman, so he decides to tell a lie to the poor girl. It is a stormy night during which Johysey thinks the last leaf surly fell, but to her surprise, there is still a leaf in that ivy tree when she pulled out the curtain next morning. In the following days, no matter how drastic the storm is the leaf never fall off the tree. Learning from the last leaf, Johysey realizes that she shouldn’t lose heart although her condition is not well, and she luckily recovers soon. However, it is a lie that saves her life. Old Behrman knows that the last leaf falling down will make the girl die, so he wants to help the girl to tell a lie that he paints a leaf instead of the real last leaf. Actually, Old Behrman’s white lie saves the girl’s life. From this story, we can understand that sometimes we should tell a lie, which may benefit people more than the truth.
In addition, the literature also inspires the progress in the technology. Jules Verne, the “father of science fiction”, is famous for his novels “From the Earth to Moon”, “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” and many other novels which are filled with vision. Verne’s work have not only surprised us because of his imagination, but also been noted for being accurate anticipations for modern times. In 1900s, Verne had described the inventions, such as air – conditioner, automobiles, the Internet, and television, those which came true in the coming one hundred years. One of his most famous predictions is the space travel in his book “From the Earth to Moon” which tells the story of three men who built an enormous sky – facing Columbiad and launch themselves to moon. Written in 1865, Verne’s story bears similarities to the real – life Apollo program which began in 1963. Verne’s spacecraft was named “Columbia”, and each spacecraft held a crew of three people. More unbelievably, Verne portrays in the book that spacecraft is launched from Tampa, Florida where is approximately 130 miles from NASA’s actual launching site. Reading the novels written by Verne, scientists get lots of inspiration which promote the technology progress.
From these two examples, we can understand that though the literature seems useless in our daily life, in fact it influences our lives and benefits us a lot.