The Power of Stories. Part Two.

The Effects of Stories

One of the most obvious and commonly recognized characteristics of a story, as well as one of the most important, is its ability to move our emotions in a pleasurable manner. This, of course, can be done in a variety of ways. From the merriment and laughter at the absurd antics of Don Quixote, Mushu, or Leslie Knope to the cathartic tears engendered by A Tale of Two Cities, The Lord of the Rings, or Shawshank Redemption, stories cause pleasure by stirring emotions.

Stories also have a unique capability to unify the otherwise separated parts of our existence. Aristotle says of stories, “Hence, poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”

A history aims to faithfully recount a true series of events, and so its end is a statement of particulars. A story, however, though written as a series of particular events, makes statements in the universal since the fabricated nature of these events leaves them, to a certain degree, unbound to matter. It is a more complex, yet rather similar instance to the particular triangle used in a Euclid proposition which is understood as abstracted and used to make universal statements, for the story could be, so to speak, the story of any man. C.S. Lewis brings a greater completion to this notion in his essay Myth Became Fact proposing that stories are a bridge between the abstract and the particular. He describes a continual tension in human experience between the actual reality of our concrete experience and the abstraction of our thought. “The more lucidly we think, the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality, the less we can think.” He describes stories as a meeting point between these two fundamental, yet opposed components of human experience. “In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise only be understood as an abstraction.” He uses the example of the story Orpheus and Eurydice to explain this idea:

At this moment, for example, I am trying to understand something very abstract indeed-the fading, vanishing of tasted reality as we try to grasp it with the discursive reason… But if I remind you, instead, of Orpheus and Eurydice, how he was suffered to lead her by the hand but, when he turned round to look at her, she disappeared, what was merely a principle becomes imaginable. You may reply that you never till this moment attached that "meaning" to that myth. Of course not. You are not looking for an abstract "meaning" at all. If that was what you were doing, the myth would be for you no true myth but a mere allegory. You were not knowing, but tasting; but what you were tasting turns out to be a universal principle. The moment we state this principle, we are admittedly back in the world of abstraction. It is only while receiving the myth as a story that you experience the principle concretely.

Though the story is built out of particulars, it also transcends the particulars to speak of universals not thereby losing the unique powers of concrete reality. This allows the series of particulars to enflesh some wider meaning or universal truth and unite these two components of our experience.

This unifying of particular with universal allows stories to give a unique sort of experiential knowledge. Although it is a step significantly removed from reality, a story, by being a recounting of particulars, affects us in much the same way as real experience. A story conjures up pseudo-sensations to our mind, building an imaginary world which affects us in a way analogous to that of reality. In this way, universals are drawn from emotions and experience in a way similar to reality. Thus a truth in story form is more deeply imprinted than is possible by a simple iteration, for it engages both parts of our nature, mind and body. The image of the cave in Plato’s Republic is an unforgettable manifestation of his idea of forms, far more effective for imprinting this notion in the minds of his hearers than a simple explanation would have been since it engages both halves of our composite nature. As Lewis said, a story deals with both the particular, concrete reality that our bodies experience and the universal truths that our minds seek to know.

All this discussion of the truth to be gained from this experiential knowledge in stories must not confuse a key point. For a story to be a good story, it is absolutely crucial that it be first and most importantly about the story- the imitation of human action. That sounds like a tautology but it isn’t. Stories written for the sake of the moral or message are far from rarities, and they are stilted and rarely successful. Authors who write this way are

conscious of problems, not of people, of questions and issues, not of the texture of existence, of case histories and everything that has a sociological smack, instead of with all those concrete details of life that make actual the mystery of our position on earth. [Flannery O'Connor]

Good stories usually have morals or messages that may be drawn from them, but these universals should inhere in the story itself, coming about naturally from it. When an author is honest to the full truth of the story he is telling, beautiful underlying truths will come about naturally. There is meaning and dignity and worth in each person and an author who tells a story well will also incarnate a deeper meaning, often layers of meaning of which he need not be aware. The 2005 film Joyeux Noel is the stunningly beautiful recounting of the World War I Christmas Truce. In many places up and down the lines, a spontaneous cease-fire broke out on Christmas Eve, enemies had Mass together in no-man's land, played soccer, buried their dead and were drawn together by the greatness of the feast. The atheist filmmaker told a beautiful and deeply Catholic story, not because he felt that the power of Christmas needed to be made evident in a movie, but because he saw a story worth telling and told it honestly and well.

While the proximate source of imitation is the individual actions, in this imitation, the story must necessarily also create some image of human nature. By imitating the actions with purpose and honesty, the author will also create an accurate, truthful and, ultimately, beautiful portrayal of human nature. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain presents to our imagination a series of particular thoughts and events in the life of a boy. The situations may be far removed from our experience, but his honesty to these characters and their actions ultimately paints a resonantly recognizable image of human nature.

In summary of this post and the last, stories are built out of words which narrate a series of particular events. These events are unified by the plot which is the introduction, development and resolution of the conflict. The resolution will normally be characterized as happy or unhappy, but will technically be somewhere on the spectrum between the two. Stories have great capacity to move the emotions and also a unique style of teaching. They bridge the gap between abstract thought and particular experience and they strive to convey some truth about human nature. While they also convey great depth of meaning, they must be told for the sake of the story.

#Stories