Finding Our Own Character in Stories
Why reading fiction is helpful for self discovery
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Influence. Throughout history, stories have been used to convey moral imperatives, contribute to social cohesion, and provide entertainment. From sitting around a fire in a group to the traveling minstrel to the literary author, the evolution of our species’ story-telling has increased in scope even as it has changed in its form. To reach thousands, if not millions, now only takes the steady click-clack of a keyboard followed by the eventual release of a digital file onto the internet. Many lament how language seems to be languishing in the land of tweets and internet slang, while others with notable examples point to bullying and trolling, but the usage of story-telling has not diminished in its potential to expand our understanding of self and others.
Stories are not simply found between pages or expressed in lengthy verbal expositions. They are the projections of our imagination, relationally connected with the world we perceive, and the world we wish existed. Classic literature is one form, but so are novels, so-called non-fiction, and even the comments we leave online in conversational threads. Each expression is a behavioral extension of an identity brought up to deal with a particular social situation. An identity is a container for a particular set of mental constructs and learned behavior. We have many of them, like hats or outfits we put on for different occasions.
Stories Expand Empathy
What happens when one encounters something or someone new is where the ebb and flow of personal change can and does occur. The way we structure those encounters is through the creation of a story or narrative.
A team led by Judith Lysaker of Purdue University conducted an experimental intervention with 22 second-and third-grade students who were exhibiting difficulties with both reading comprehension and social relationships. The children participated in a reading group that focused not only on understanding the text but also on exploring the thoughts, intentions, and emotions of the characters in the books. For example, the students were asked to write a letter from a particular character’s perspective.
This experiment, remarked upon in Observer Vol.27, No.7 September 2014, “Literary Character,” led to an increase in reading comprehension and the ability to imagine the emotions of others. Active learning through the study of a story opened up the imaginative potential such that empathy increased. This was done through reading and good teaching. How much more could be done if narratives were seen in everything people do?
Working with adults, focusing in particular on theory of mind (ToM: understanding other people’s mental states), further research noted:
The study suggests that not just any fiction helps foster ToM. Unlike popular fiction, literary fiction requires intellectual engagement and creative thought from its readers, Kidd and Castano assert.
“Features of the modern literary novel set it apart from most bestselling thrillers or romances,” they wrote. “Through the use of … stylistic devices, literary fiction defamiliarizes its readers. Just as in real life, the worlds of literary fiction are replete with complicated individuals whose inner lives are rarely easily discerned but warrant exploration.”
The key points here are concerned with “intellectual engagement” and “creative thought.” These intentional behaviors broaden a person’s ideas about others through an empathic union, utilizing the imagination to see connections otherwise unnoticed. Those “complicated individuals” “warrant exploration” because of the desire of the reader. The existence of that desire, not simply the form of the literature, is paramount, as in the same article, it is noted:
even books populated by wizards, dragons, vampires, and aliens can strive to depict important aspects of the human experience.
How often have you felt disconnected in a school class or when meeting other people and suddenly found yourself drawn to a subject or a person? That draw is the feeling of intentional connection. Such a connection is not limited to academic pursuits but pervades our entire lives, pushing us to pursue or not pursue one or another personal relationship or experience.
Character is the Personal Made Ethical
“The theoretical formulations of reality, whether they be scientific or philosophical or even mythological, do not exhaust what is “real” for the members of a society. Since this is so, the sociology of knowledge must first of all concern itself with what people “know” as “reality” in their everyday, non- or pre-theoretical lives.” -
The Social Construction of Reality, by Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann
What people “know” is an extension of who they believe themselves to be, the character-as-person guiding behavioral interactions both with other people and with the character-in-story that they’re actively engaging in creating. Ethics is all about those interactions, the means by which we treat ourselves and one another. Jonathan Sacks notes that morality expands us from the merely egoistic into an appreciation of the social interconnections of which we are all part. As noted above, interactions require mental structure to understand them, and those structures we call stories or narratives. The navigation of those stories requires a character, both in a personal sense and also as an ethical attribute.
The dual meaning of character as both a person and an attribute means we express our character-as-self through the myriad of identities used to interact with experiences. Our character-as-attribute determines, at any given moment within a perceived context, the Values we focus on.
Those stories and the character, both as self and as moral attribute, that we engage through with others, creates the ethic of our lives. Ethics, as principles and guide, determine the extent of our ability to respond to changing experiences. They shape how we see things, help us select which pieces of data out of perceived reality are going to contribute to the continuity of who we believe ourselves to be and how we’re going to act.
This is not the name-it-claim-it mentality of the positive thinking movement; this is the experience of life as a tapestry of narrative threads, each with degrees of good and bad, positive and negative, often both at the same time. Books and the stories they contain are gateways into other worlds, a way of exploring with smaller consequences than it would be socially, an array of people and the narratives being spun.
We seek to understand the actions of ourselves and others as both an intrinsic desire to know the theory-of-mind of those we interact with and a way of determining how best to navigate the relationships we are inevitably part of as social creatures. Character exploration is to engage creatively in that process, whether through fiction or with other people, to illuminate one’s own experience and expand our flexibility in living our socially embedded lives.