Living in storyland

I hadn't cried in months.  Yet there it was.  The salty globule snowballed down my cheek and thudded into my shirt.  I couldn't believe she had died.  I had gotten to know her so well.  She was quirky, strange, and a bit psycho, but the 240 book had allowed me to see into the soul of this character.  I knew her fear, her hatred, her anger, her dreams, her love, and her tenderness.  And I felt her death deeply.

The above paragraph recounts an experience I had two weeks ago as I finished a book.  It made me think about one of the central questions I've wrestled with in the past few years--why are we attracted to fiction and story?  What about story is so powerful?  Why can stories inspire and influence, terrorize and frighten, warm and encourage?

I've heard many accounts that have given 'functional' answers to these questions-these accounts say that humans like stories because they serve a function that improves our evolutionary fitness.  For example, stories are an emotional simulator-they allow us to read about how other people deal with emotions and go through life and we can learn and be better at coping and surviving because we become more emotionally mature.  Or that stories help us cope with really difficult situations.  The reason why stories always have conflicts is that we are learning how to overcome such conflicts in our lives, and again it gives us a survival advantage.  Another is that stories teach us good moral lessons, so we learn how to cooperate with other members of society.

I'm not convinced by any of these accounts.  Sure, there is some truth in each of them.  There are shards of truth in every thought.

Might it be that it has something to do with the longing of the human heart for intimacy?  Books are special when it comes to intimacy.  You get to read about characters from all angles.  You get to read their thoughts, all of their conversations, their actions, their desires, their dreams, their hurts, their shame.  How often do we get to do that in real life?  How many of my friends' inner thoughts do I know?  Their dreams?  Their wounds?  Their vulnerabilities?

We become attached to characters that we read about because in a way they are more real to us.  They are more real in the sense that they become dynamic characters who we see as whole pictures throughout the course of the book.  In 'real' life, we interact with others in chaotic, frenzied episodes.  We rarely get the opportunity to meet someone else who opens their souls so that we can read them like a book.

But we long for that sense of intimacy.  We want to be fully known and fully loved; we want to fully know and to fully love.  Maybe that's why we love stories.