COLUMN: Stories Unite Us All

The following was submitted by Kyra Kruger, an intern with WestfordCAT. To submit your own content, e-mail asylvia@westfordcat.org

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WARNING: This blog post contains Game of Thrones Spoilers.  If you have not seen the finale of season 5, kindly do so immediately and then come back and read this.  If you don’t watch Game of Thrones…what else have you been doing with your life? I advise you stop whatever you are doing, watch the 50 hours worth of awesomeness, and then return for full appreciation of this post.

Have you ever had one of those days when you’re just tired and fed up with people?  When, despite your efforts to unite humankind against the greater evil of ice zombies, they still rebel against you, call you a traitor, and stab you four times in the stomach? When, all you really want is to save the world from eternal night and no one else seems to understand? Well, let me tell you, Jon Snow can relate.  At least he would be able to understand, had he not died of stab wounds.

It will suffice to say that Sunday’s final episode left me reeling, and feeling a little “anti-people,” or more accurately “anti-whoever-came-up-with-that-plot.”  I sat on my couch, frozen and breathless, as the credits rolled down the screen just like the tears that rolled down my cheeks.  “How could they do this?,” I thought.  “How could they kill the most perfect, noble, selfless man who ever lived? What kind of monster decided that the death of the noblest of Starks, my friend Jon Snow would be a good plot twist?” 

Through blurry eyes, I tried to blink away from the pain and injustice. My heart, twisted and torn like a carnival pretzel, did not unravel for a full half hour as I cursed every member of the Night’s Watch.  As my tear ducts dried and my sanity returned, I came to the realization that I was crying over a death that never took place.

Jon Snow was not a real person.  The Night’s Watch did not protect the Northern Wall.  In fact, there was no Northern Wall, and the world was not being threatened by an army of the undead.  My restoration to reality was swift and jarring.

As stories are a great passion of mine, I have always wondered why we (or at least I) become so attached to fictional characters.  These people do not exist and yet time and time again they affect us just as strongly, just as deeply, as someone who lives and breathes and whose heart pumps real blood.

I have come to realize that these characters aren’t so fictional after all.  They are in fact, pieces of the author, the screenwriter, put down and given away, in hopes that someone, somewhere will recognize that piece in themselves.

Humankind’s fascination with stories reflects our primal need to connect with one another, their deep desire for empathy and understanding.  If we are ever struggling with family, or friends, or our personal demons, there will always be a story and a character that can relate, no matter how fantastical the plot.

For depression, look to J.K. Rowling’s dementors, for the struggles of adolescence, Salinger’s Holden Caulfield.  For the realities of family life, empathize with the four sibling stars of Parenthood.  And for the hard choices in life, look to Jon Snow, who put the greater good above his life, his family, and his work.

Behind every good character is the real life human whose imagination created them.  When we make a connection with a character, that recognition runs straight through our bones.  Their family becomes our family, their pain our pain.  The line between their world and ours begins to blur until we can no longer separate feelings of fiction and feelings of reality.

Soon, it becomes us in the story, we morph into a particular character until we can no longer recognize where reality ends and fiction begins.  Their thoughts become our thoughts, their actions our actions, their grief our grief, their flaws our flaws.

It is at these times, that the power and magic of storytelling become so apparent.  We are no longer sympathizers for a story; we have become the story. For every TV show we have cried through, for every book with tear stained pages, for every plot twist that has spurred online rage, there is someone somewhere who is feeling the same way.

This is how stories unite us. By empathizing with fictional characters, we are really relating to each other and the human condition.  In the end, we are not so different after all, and we have stories to thank in part for reminding us