Unifying Our Stories
When reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court the big question on my mind was: So, did it actually happen? Although it didn't seem to matter much to Mark Twain I couldn't help but wonder whether Hank actually traveled back in time or if it was all just a figment of his imagination.
A similar phenomenon happens when reading Song of Solomon, and really just about every story we have covered in this class. When reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow I thought not about the message of not being a free-loader but instead wondered if the headless knight really existed. When reading Young Goodman Brown I was not as concerned about Goodman Brown's attempted Satan worship as I was curious as to if it was a dream or actually happened. And so it goes on with every story.
Reading stories this way is reasonable – in fact its reasonable to a fault. We all live in a world of reason and rules. Usually we don't even notice the rules until they are broken. In my life I don't have to pay attention to the fact that nobody flies and everyone just stays on their own two feet because no one is trying to defy the rule that people do not fly. So in a story when I am confronted with a character in a story who tries to fly and does, my first reaction is not what is the point, why would the author give her character a special ability? I think "how did he do that?"
Reading reasonably is especially easy when the author leaves the magic ambiguous. Twain lends his story easily to an interpretation that Hank was simply mad the whole time.
However when reading a story with regular conceptions of "rules" a reader loses out. It doesn't really matter if Hank went back in time or imagined the whole story from a bed. And whether the witchcraft was real or not doesn't –practically speaking – change how Goodman Brown feels about his wife. Milkman experiences weird and wonderful magical things and it doesn't particularly matter if they are real or not. Reading reasonably only allows for a very superficial understanding of a story. If a person reading a Connecticut Yankee and only looked into whether or not Hank time traveled or not then he would miss the whole satire, the humor, and everything that makes the book worth reading.
Toni Morrison might be reminding her characters that it doesn't functionally make a difference if the thing they are afraid of is real, but she is also reminding a reader to stop knit-picking and let himself go in the story.
These stories ignore certain rules/ laws of physics, but that doesn't matter. These rules, or lack thereof add to the story, and leave a real story in their wake.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was younger (and to some extent still) I had no patience for a lot of sci-fi and fantasy because they were too focused on creating this new system of rules instead of focusing on the story.
These stories are all based around real people, and the magic within them (for the most part) is questionable, leaving the reader to decide whether they want to place the story as imaginative in our world, or just taking place in a world where magic exists. Many readers prefer to place stories in their own world to make them relatable and understandable, and it is an interesting book that allows that without being predictable
I think that part of what makes a book more entertaining is when the reader can be involved in the book itself. When books can be open to interpretation, this allows for each individual to read the book in a different way, thus causing an interaction between author and reader. A truly talented author is able to maintain this balance between presenting a story line and keeping the reader involved. I get frustrated when the author is too vague and leaves too much to my own interpretations, however when the author tells me everything, and leaves nothing for my own reasoning to deduce, I feel as if the author is spoon-feeding me. I think that Toni Morrison is able to maintain this balance in a very admirable way, making Song of Solomon a much more entertaining read. Mark Twain also employs this idea, however I think in the book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, I found that in some aspects Twain was a little too vague, and maybe left a little bit too much to the discretion of the reader.
ReplyDeleteDoes it really matter in terms of the plot? Well, it changes the way we understand it. It adds a level of interest, trying to decipher whether what we read is “real,” or how it could be made real. It adds a layer of meaning, seeing exactly where the deviations between plausible and implausible take place, and why, to what purpose. But by doing that, we lose out on the magic of the story. The pure creativity and imagination that go hand-in-hand with magic open up so many other pathways of interpretation, and make the story downright enjoyable. It also adds a kind of beauty that cold reason just doesn’t have, that element of “what if.”
ReplyDeleteLizzie, it seems like you are describing 2 different ways of reading a book. We can read it either for enjoyment and let the magic take over and allow the realistic parts and the implausible parts to meld together. Or we can try to decipher it on a deeper level, picking out different features, and as you describe "lose out on the magic of the story". I think there is an benefit to analyzing books sometimes, but we also need to be careful not to lose the magic in the process.
DeleteYup, I was describing two ways, and I think they each have their place, though I'm partial to reading it for enjoyment. Basically, I agree with ST, that these books have "weird and wonderful magical things and it doesn't particularly matter if they are real or not." Sorry if that wasn't clear.
DeleteAnd because it somehow got erased from my original post, here's a shoutout to ST: I really liked your post, and I agree that by nitpicking we sometimes lose out on much of what makes the book.
Your post reminds me of the quote by Madeleine L'Engle "And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." There is a lot more magic and implausibility in children and young adult books than in adult ones. Your post is precisely right. Adults are too hung up on things being real and possible that they lose the enjoyment of the book. Rules are more important to adults because they make the world go round and perhaps adults feel threatened by things that challenge those rules. Asking did it happen is less about the story and more about protecting the reader's values and truths.
ReplyDeleteHi Esti, I thought your blog post was very well-said and insightful. I agree with you wholeheartedly that reading into things too literally certainly short-changes you on the lessons you can get from it, and the level of depth you can understand it as. Sometimes, I find, however, that it's kind of hard to do this, just because the pull that magic has on us is so powerful, it almost seems primal. Reading Harry Potter, for example, we want to believe so badly that it's true, that some people actually think it is, and fall to their deaths when they jump off cliffs and buildings straddling a broomstick, thinking that their Firebolt or Nimbus 2000 is going to let them fly. It almost takes a certain amount of inertia for me to ignore that pull and to read the novel as it is, knowing, consciously, that the magic is false, and yet still incorporating it into the overall lesson of the book so that you can maximize the output of your reading.
ReplyDeleteWow, I will never read Harry Potter the same way again! Though what you said about people diving off buildings reminded me of Song of Solomon, how in the beginning of the book, the insurance guy dies trying to fly. The magic in Song of Solomon wasn't exactly a beneficial force, and it isn't as gratuitous as waving a wand. I think magic in many of these books represented something greater than humans; to be reached for but never mastered, or (in Young Goodman Brown) to be feared. Magic also gives storytellers a way to represent human uncertainty. Nothing is as clear in life as it is in books, and human ignorance is palpable when magic is thrown into the mix. I guess that's why it's hard to come to from an age of reason. We're taught that books should clarify things and come to the truth, while these fictions remind us that there's more out there than facts.
Delete