My theory is that we need all the ideas we can get about life and survival and how other people do it so we can keep up, surpass or simply marvel at the ingenuity, inventiveness, idiocy or dirty rotten evil of our fellow humans.
We’re told that a good story needs conflict. Why is this? Maybe because readers want to know how to compete, overcome, surmount, conquer and prevail. We empathise when good or bad things happen to the protagonist and we feel we could do as well in the same circumstances or we store the information away for use the next time those circumstances show up in our lives. Haven’t we all sworn we’d never throw ourselves under a train or steal a loaf of bread and swanned around for a few minutes like Scarlett O’Hara, d’Artagnan or James Bond?
And we particularly like to hate villains because we think they’re not like us. Villains make us feel virtuous and superior. We recognize similar traits in the people we know and feel better armed to deal with them. But we rarely if ever feel villainous or evil ourselves. We know we have good reasons for our bad behavior and that deep down we’re fine, upstanding people. I’ve never met anyone who says wow, I really see myself in Iago, Javert, or Voldemort.
Reading makes us feel informed, enriched and better prepared for life because of the characters and events we’ve read about Better human beings, even.
I always feel as though I’ve eaten a delicious, colorful and fattening meal when I’ve finished a good book. I’m always sorry it’s finished and I need to take a while to digest it before starting another. *