The Fictional Format
There is something about a story told in a fictional format that provokes empathy – people’s ability to relate, understand, or feel for someone different from themselves – more so than the average news article. When people consume nonfiction – written works that provide factual information, like a news article – they tend to “read with [their] shields up” (Gottschall). People are less easily swayed by nonfiction and are more critical of it. However, when becoming immersed in a fictional story instead, they are more easily influenced and open to learning and assimilating new things. Being “moved emotionally… makes us rubbery and easy to shape” (Gottschall). Engaging with fiction can sway people’s thoughts, opinions, and mindset for better or worse depending on what kind of content they are consuming and to argue that fiction is nothing but mindless entertainment greatly underestimates the power of creative writing in finding ways to deliver morals, lessons, etc. though writing that tells a story of which is actually untrue. This is not to argue that nonfiction is entirely ineffective; it does have a place in providing people with information. However, nonfiction oftentimes doesn’t stick with people in the same way due to the difference in the way the information is given.
Works of fiction have affected people in the past and contributed to major shifts in mindset. Harriet Beacher Stowe’s book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is credited with having changed the views of many Americans during the Civil War era, which was a helpful push towards the abolishment of slavery in the United States (Gow). Meanwhile, more negatively, the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation “inflamed racist sentiments and helped resurrect an all but defunct KKK” (Gottschall). Fiction serves as an author guiding their audience – for better or worse – to think or feel differently. Both Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Birth of a Nation draw heavily upon real life issues, so though they may not be 100% factual or nonfiction, they manage to convey a real message through effective storytelling. In school, children are sometimes tasked with trying to find the moral of a story they have read; such is the action of deliberately looking for the message that the author has woven into their story. Though some works of fiction may have a clearer, easier-to-spot “moral” within them than others, that doesn’t mean that they are the only stories that have such. Almost every work of fiction has some sort of meaning within it.