The Storytelling Animal Chapters 1 and 2

This blog post is a reflection on the first two chapter of The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gotschall. If you enjoy this post, you can look forward to further reflections on the book.

Gottschall provides many interesting ideas on the subject of stories and their importance. He includes ideas related to evolution. Perhaps storytelling was a means of obtaining procreation. He discusses the joy people get from storytelling. Gotschall touches upon the idea that storytelling in the form of daydreams and pretend-play gives us the opportunity to escape reality and do what we could not do in the real world. I find this compilation of ideas highly intriguing.

I found his discussion of children and their pretend-play highly intriguing. I entertained myself in this way throughout most of my child. I would pretend to be a fairy or a person caught in a nuclear wasteland. It is amazing the depths of darkness that a child’s mind can achieve. Even more, it is amazing how early stories are a part of humanity. One of the first activities children can engage in is pretend-play. As we grow, the stories simply change.

Gottschall discusses a possible explanation for the treachery of children’s pretend-play. Perhaps children dream up demons because that is what we feed them. From the days of Grimm, children’s stories have been dark. There are witches and monsters. Could this be the source of the pretend-play fixation on problems. I do not believe so. Humans need puzzles. They need conflict. It would be boring for a child to pretend that everything is perfect. What would they do? They would seek adventure and in that adventure would find conflict. Fairytales may be a part of why children play and dream about dark topics, but conflict, in some form, is something that humans will always seek out and this is not bad. This world needs problem-solvers.

Another intriguing claim Gotschall makes, is that storytelling is immensely powerful. I firmly agree with him in this area. Lawyers and journalists use this everyday. A political candidate can be ruined by an article portraying them in a negative light. A court case can be won by the power of theatrics. Humans connect to stories. Therefore, stories have the power to take hold of our mind.

As Gotschall is an atheist, he will not agree with my next point, but I believe that the story of Jesus backs up Gotschall’s ideas about the power of storytelling. The story of Jesus and his death for all people on the cross is often referred to in the Christian community as “the greatest story ever told” and it is. This is a story that has more power than any other because it has the power to save souls. That is a claim no other story can make.