Essential Fiction
It is not without the extensive realms of the imagination that God sustains humankind, made in God's own image, as partakers of the mystery of creation. Our Maker crafted us with colorful minds, ready for adventure, in order that we might use these minds to begin to discover our world's revelations of truth and beauty and enhance our perspectives on life. From the beginnings of civilization, humanity has relied upon the limitless moral and cultural values of myth and lore, and in their portrayal of fictional tales societies have defined and preserved themselves. After all, what would the Ancient Near East have been without "The Arabian Nights"? Or the Greco-Roman world without Homer's great epics? I must ask myself what musings would have entertained my own childhood were it not for the telling of great stories. Fairy tales have so often sustained me when otherwise my circumstances might have smothered my optimism. The hopes cultivated by the fictional triumphs of heroes beyond this world frequently strengthen the minds of young people. Often no other goodness can be conveyed than that which can whisk a person away into magical lands fraught with riveting adventures. The exposure to fiction is essential to the naturally creative human mind, as the art of fairy tale portrays elements of life's truths and provides the imagination with a healthy escape to the world beyond.
As beings of intrinsic artful desire, the use of our God-given creative imaginations is essential in order to be good stewards of our faculties. In various ways, man desires to produce and experience artistic creativity, and engaging the endless world of fictional stories is a beautiful way to do so. Two of the twentieth century's most prolific writer's of fiction, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, agree that there is an innate aspect of man which yearns to express itself in the creative telling of a great story. In his essay, "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to be Said," C. S. Lewis recalls his own response to the creative process, recording that "the Author' impulse is a desire (it is very like an itch), and of course, like every other desire, needs to be criticized by the whole Man" (421). He goes on to describe in a very fitting manner that, "in the Author's mind there bubbles up every now and then the material for a story. He longs to see that bubbling stuff pouring into that Form as the housewife longs to see the new jam pouring into the clean jam jar" (421). Lewis is of course referring to the divine inspiration of man to be creative, and that one valid form into which he might pour this creativity is the form of fictional literature. J. R. R. Tolkien alludes to the same principle in an excerpt from "On Fairy Stories," making the orthodox Christian theological claim that "God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature" (429). "Art has been verified," he remarks, referring to the redeemed nature of man's creativity due to the gospel of Jesus Christ (430). The art which proceeds from the creative mind, in imago Dei, desires to 'write-ly' serve an edifying artistic form. Tolkien speculates that "probably every writer...wishes in some measure to be a real maker," perhaps to tell a tale which would speak to life's axioms of truth (429).
Realities of the world (sometimes even the World to Come) and humanity are conveyed in fairy tale. Myth often teaches essential truths of nature. In his rather humorous essay of cultural remarks against those who would oppose the use of the fairy story, "Dragooning the Dragon,"the English author G. K. Chesterton makes light of the fact that reality can be experienced in fiction. Chesterton writes in opposition to adults who would promote the idea that a child should be preserved from the 'dangers' of fiction "and that he must rather reserve his faith for the sober truth told in the newspapers" (425). He goes on to say, regarding the young reader of fairy tales, that "he can remain in complete isolation and ignorance, and still have the experience of fear. The child learns without being taught that life contains some element of enmity" (Chesterton 425). In agreement with the idea that truth is often conveyed more purely in the art of fiction than in other readings, J. R. R. Tolkien writes in "On Fairy Stories," that "the peculiar quality of the 'joy' in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth" (429). In addition to Chesterton's claim, Tolkien shifts the perspective of fantasy from its reader to its writer, describing that the creator of some literary world probably "hopes that the peculiar quality of this second world...[is] derived from Reality, or [is] flowing into it" (429). The beauty of the fantastical tale which speaks of truth and reality is that its setting and characters usually exist in the realms of imagination beyond reality.
The experience of fictional stories in imaginative reality is typically a very necessary escape, healthy for the mind's perception of the beyond. Recalling his own early-childhood digestion of Christian ideas, C. S. Lewis describes his own catharsis in the adventure of writing fiction: "I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood...supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency" (422).
The reader here seems to capture a glimpse of the mental escape Lewis required to be able to digest the powerful messages of the Gospel. Sometimes it is this mysterious noetic experience which sends the mind sailing away from the struggles of life on earth, providing an otherwise unexperienced solitude, and even enforcing the mind with a sense of safety from corruption. In his essay, "On Fairy Stories," J. R. R. Tolkien focuses on the essence of the reader's encounter with fiction, while at the same time reminding his reader that the author has contributed to such a cultivation of goodness that "in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation" (430). Human beings of every age group are in need of the artistic expression of mystery.
In conclusion, one of the most real elements of the human experience is that which is, in fact, quite unreal. From our mind's first wanderings, we are inclined to the hearing and telling of stories. Thus, we engage creativity. In creation, man experiences the almost salvific escape from this world's reality and is allowed to delve into the mysteries of the undiscovered beyond. Fiction can elevate its reader into the spiritual, revealing alternative perspectives to his experience of truth and sharpening his religious expressions; it is often the makings of all the sensibilities which make one human. In the wide world of fiction, we experience the transcendent by escaping the imminent, so that our creative perceptions may be safe to expand and to grow into the very elements of life: truth, beauty, and goodness.
Works Cited
Chesterton, G. K. "Dragooning the Dragon." Encounters: Readings for Advanced Composition. Ed. William R. Epperson and Mark R. Hall. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 2001. 425. Print.
Lewis, C. S. "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's To Be Said." Encounters: Readings for Advanced Composition. Ed. William R. Epperson and Mark R. Hall. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 2001. 421-422. Print.
Tolkien, J. R. R. "On Fairy Stories." Encounters: Readings for Advanced Composition. Ed. William R. Epperson and Mark R. Hall. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 2001. 429-430. Print.
