Caring About Fiction

Norm (from Ophelia Benson) wonders why we should care about fictional characters.

It seems to me that the real mystery goes further back, to the question of why we listen empathetically to stories about other people - other real people. Which is to say why we care about other people enough to imagine what it's like to be them. Now that's a big topic, clearly, and pretty much defines what it's like to be human, but once you've got that much, once you have the ability to enter imaginatively into the lives of others, I don't see that it's any more extraordinary to care about people who don't exist than it is to care about people who do.

So...you're being told a story, a tale of courage and high adventure. It happened to a man I knew, says the narrator. He did this....this....this. You're drawn in by the skill of the telling. Maybe the narrator describes the hero, or maybe you just build up a picture in your mind. Whatever. At the end of the story you say, "That was amazing. I'd love to meet this man." The narrator says, "Well, as it happens, I wasn't quite telling the truth there. I don't know the man. Someone told me that story just like I'm telling you. I never met him." Do you feel cheated? Not really. It was a wonderful story, and you imagined the scenes even though, as you now know, the person telling you the story didn't have actual personal knowledge of the hero or of his adventures. It actually - so you reflect - matters not at all that the narrator didn't know the hero. So you go off and and tell someone else the story, with the same effect. No, you say, I didn't know the hero personally. I never met him. It's a story I was told, just like I'm telling it to you.

As the story is retold - and, such is the way with stories - embellished, it acquires a life of its own. The hero has left the world of history and entered the world of legend. When did he exist? Way way back in time...or just yesterday? Does it matter? Where did he live? Across the ocean? Or in the next village? Or...not at all. The actual existence of a person in a story, it becomes clear, is not in fact of much consequence as far as the effectiveness of the story goes. Oh yes, it's interesting to know when a story is an accurate reflection of events that took place, when it's been embellished, and when it's a complete fabrication from start to finish, but it doesn't matter that much when it comes to the power of the story. In fact the importance of separating fiction from history is a fairly modern and sophisticated development. Back in the mists of time, as they say, the story alone was what mattered, its emotional truth, its power to hold the listener - not its concordance with something that may or may not have happened and about which there's no possibility of finding out anyway.

Once we have the imaginative and linguistic skills to listen to, and to tell, stories about other people such that we identify with them, and learn to like or dislike or otherwise react to them as we would to those we were personally acquainted with in our social lives - a wholly astonishing ability, but there you go - the ontological status of those people is actually of little or no importance. Once you've got the empathy, the rest follows automatically. For a listener (or reader) a story about the Smiths next door is very little different from a story about the Smiths you've never met who live in a town 100 miles away, which in turn is very little different from a story about the Smiths who live in Neverneverland. Except of course the only limits to what the Smiths can get up to in Neverneverland are set by your imagination.

Update: as well as George S (in the comments) see Tom Freeman, plus firther thoughts from Ophelia B.

Comments

[George S]

Comment spaces are a bit short for this, Mick, but I have a tentative go at the answer at my place: http://www.georgeszirtes.co.uk/index.php?page=news#d54c261ec515e54926a93ceb660b9ecd.

[J.Cassian]

"Except of course the only limits to what the Smiths can get up to in Neverneverland are set by your imagination."

Doesn't Morrissey have a say in this?