How Fiction Forms Moral Character
While walking home one afternoon, I saw a teenager slumped at a bus stop. His eyes were closed. A tin of Coke was spilled around his feet and his mobile buzzed beside him, unanswered. He was alone and did not seem to be moving.
Well, what are you waiting for? said my conscience, a little shoulder-angel, winged and with a harp. See if he’s OK.He might be dying, or diabetic and needs insulin. As it went on to preach verses like ‘Love thy neighbour’ and ‘Do unto others’, my shoulder-devil, a red me with a pitchfork, appeared and said, Don’t!He might wake up and stab you—don’t most teens carry knives these days?Besides, you don’t know what’s in his system—cocaine, bath salts …he could chew the face off you. And if you died, what would become of your family—and all those unpublished stories? Better not risk it.
I listened to the red guy. I walked right past the teenager, and the shoulder-angel and the should-devil disappeared. The dead/dying/diabetic teen was almost out of eyeshot when I remembered a scene from C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair. In it, Aslan—the Christ figure of the novel—tells the two young heroes that the person they are searching for will be the one who calls upon his name. And they find this person: a frenzied lunatic bound to a chair. Fearing for their lives if they freed him, the children think of ignoring Aslan’s advice.
But then their companion, Puddleglum, tells them this: ‘You see, Aslan didn’t [say] what would happen. He only [said] what to do. That fellow [in the chair] will be the Death of us once he’s up, I should wonder. But that doesn’t let us off...’
Finally, the children free the lunatic … who turns out to be a spellbound prince! Remembering this scene as I walked down the street, I was reminded of the fact that Christ’s commands don’t always come with a guarantee of safety, yet we are to carry them out in obedience.
Long story short, I returned to the teenager—who was not a spellbound prince but a plastered student in need of an ambulance—and thought it interesting that, while I knew the right thing to do, it was the moral of a fictional story that swayed me.
‘It is really quite remarkable what happens when reading a great novel,’ wrote the literary critic Gary Morson, ‘Reading a novel, you experience the perceptions, values and quandaries of [another] person ... To be sure, there are other disciplines that sometimes tell us that we should empathise, but only literature offers constant practice in doing so.’
I’m not going to argue that novels are more powerful than the Bible; that would be stupid. But I will argue that reading stories is helpful in the cultivating of virtue.
What is virtue?
To put it simply, virtues are moral excellence. Listed by philosophers and theologians throughout history, from Aristotle to Paul to C.S. Lewis, they include—but are not limited to—prudence, temperance, justice, courage, faith, hope, love, chastity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility. Virtues are a kind of happy medium between excess and deficiency; tilt the scale too much in either direction, and it becomes a vice. A lack of courage, for example, is cowardice: a trained and armed knight chickening out from battle. A gross excess of courage, on the other hand, is stupidity and rashness: an unarmed knight in his boxers running to slay a dragon. And why is virtue important? Because we are to be ‘blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation.’ Or as Peter would tell us, God has ‘called us to glory and to virtue’ (2 Peter 1:3). Virtue is the fruit of faith; and any seed that doesn’t bear fruit is simply a waste of the sower’s time.
Virtue by example
Fiction helps us through what Leland Ryken calls ‘good old-fashioned example theory.’ Because literature is an imagining forth of good and evil abstract ideas into a solid cast of characters, we are able to see, with our imagination’s eye, examples of human virtue and vice play out on the page, depicting behaviour and worldviews we can either reject or admire. This idea of example-setting seems childishly simple—so simple, in fact, that we easily miss it: setting examples is the business of stories. It is how literature works.
In a letter to his friend about the value of literature, the 18th century U.S. President Thomas Jefferson puts it like this: ‘Everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue. When any original act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also.’
And it’s not only through good characters who can inspire virtue, adds Jefferson: ‘when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity, and conceive an abhorrence of vice.’ In other words, virtue is beautified in its contrast to the ugly opposite: through the misdeeds of lapsed heroes, such as Borimir in The Lord of the Rings, or through hateful and despicable characters such as Dickens’s Ebenezer Scrooge. Reading about such villains also exercises our judgement … and more often than not, we end up condemning ourselves, villains mirroring our own sins. In getting us to recognise the splinters in our own eye through the planks in its characters, great literature succeeds in winning our minds from wickedness to virtue, inflaming us with a desire to be worthy. It is no surprise, then, that during the year A Christmas Carol was first published, charitable spending in England tripled.
Virtue by vicarious practice
Research conducted at Emory University shows us that reading fiction not only heightens connectivity in the part of the brain associated with language, but also in the part of the brain to do with creating representations of sensation for the body. In other words, reading activates parts of your brain related to the story’s subject. Reading about running, for example, will activate the neurons associated with the physical act of running. Reading about fear will trigger the neurons associated with being afraid. ‘The neural changes,’ writes the researcher Gregory Berns, ‘... suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist. We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else's shoes in a figurative sense. Now we're seeing that something may also be happening biologically ... the fact that we're detecting [changes] over a few days ... suggests that your favourite novels could certainly have a bigger and longer-lasting effect on the biology of your brain.’ Neurologists call this phenomenon ‘grounded cognition’; literary theorists call it ‘fictive dreaming’because of the way illusory worlds, like our dreams, can alter our real-life emotions.
Virtue is not a merely a theory to be approved, nor is it a single action. Virtues are habits of moral character, a kind of second nature. And like any nature, it develops through practice. Thomas Jefferson’s letter goes on to say: ‘Now every emotion of this kind [that is, the admiration of goodness and the abhorrence of evil] is an exercise of our virtuous dispositions; and dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise. But exercise produces habit; and in the instance of which we speak, the exercise being of the moral feelings, produces a habit of thinking and acting virtuously.’ This is akin to what C.S. Lewis discusses in Mere Christianity about putting on Christ, how ‘pretence leads up to the real thing.’
Through our imagination, through the biology of what happens when we read fiction, entering into another mind and ‘putting on’ that character, perceiving the world through their eyes and living their lives—all the while judging their thoughts and deeds by the light of Scripture—builds up in us virtuous thinking while also sharpening our discernment. It also sharpens our empathy. The singer Johnny Cash said he loved drug addicts and alcoholics—‘Only someone who has had such a problem can have complete love and compassion and understanding for such people.’ If Christians are called to love our neighbours, then we need empathy, to know a fellow human being’s suffering and hopelessness as our own. Though nothing beats real life experience, literature can bring us close. As C.S. Lewis puts it, books let us become a thousand different people, yet remain ourselves.
Evoking responsiveness towards God
One of my favourite non-fiction books is the biography Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me by Karen Swallow Prior. In it, she discusses how great literature saved her from self-destruction at key points in her life. In one of the chapters, she makes an admission so honest I had to read it twice: ‘I admit that my relationship with God has been more intellectual than emotional, I used to think this lack of emotional fervour was a mark of sin, or at the very least, some great flaw in my spiritual life. I thought that it must be great lack in my faith that I am more emotionally moved in reading literary works like Great Expectations than in reading dramatic passages from the bible or in hearing a moving testimony from the pulpit. But I’ve come to realize that my emotional responses to moving works of literature … are the only way I can bear to respond emotionally to God and his love: indirectly.’
I know what she means. Partly because I have read the passage so many times—but also because my finite mind can’t comprehend the magnitude of such an event—I don’t well up when recounting Christ’s execution at Calvary. Likewise, I fail to overflow with joy when thinking of reconciliation with God and a heavenly inheritance, because I find it difficult if not impossible to comprehend. I shake my head at the sins of ancient Israel, but am not so often disgusted by the depths of my own depravity, and the corrosive effects of sin on me and the rest of mankind made in God’s image.
Yet, I find myself deeply moved by The Chronicles of Narnia and the sacrifice of Aslan … and then I think of Christ, and worship him with a renewed and deepened appreciation. In a story like The Star by H.G. Wells, I am horrified by the descriptions of the tiny cosmic changes that trigger catastrophe for our planet—and then admire the delicate complexities of God’s universe, and how ‘all things are upheld by the power of his word’. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and its godless, post-apocalyptic horrors haunt me—and let me see what it would be like for God to withdraw his love from mankind, and I swell with gratitude that he remains faithful to his fallen creatures.
Professor Swallow Prior writes, ‘It’s like when Moses asked God to see his glory, and God answered, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” So God took Moses to the cleft of a rock and covered him with his hand while his glory passed by. As R. C. Sproul notes about this passage, “The Lord’s goodness withheld what Moses could not bear and revealed all that he could.” ... Literature is like the cleft of a rock that God has taken me to, a place from which I can experience as much of the glory of God as I can endure. Great literature allowed me, like Moses, to see the back of God.’
It might sound like exaggerating the power of literature. So let me give an example of how a story—a fairy tale, in fact—brought me closer to Christ. It is called The Happy Prince written by Oscar Wilde. I’d advise you listen the audiobook (brilliantly read by Stephen Fry) before reading on. It is only twenty minutes long. Otherwise, I have summarised it below.
Summary of The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde
Once upon a time, a Swallow wanted to escape the oncoming winter and fly to the sunny exotica of Egypt. However, on his way, in a corrupt little city, he encounters a bejewelled, gold-leafed statue called the Happy Prince. However, the statue is weeping, because he sees all around him the greed of the city and the plight of the poor. He asks the Swallow to stay, and to pluck out the ruby from his sword hilt and to deliver it to a family with a feverishly sick child.
‘I need to get to Egypt!’ the Swallow says. But eventually, like a chore, he gives into the Prince’s request, allowing the mother of the ill child to buy clean water.
Winter draws nearer. Just as the Swallow is about to leave again—dreaming about the warm golden shores of Egypt—the statue Prince begs him to stay a little longer. The Swallow grows irritated and impatient—he is worried that wintry snow will prevent him from flying to warm and sunny Egypt—but seeing the Prince’s desire to alleviate the suffering of the town, decides to stay one more night. This time, the Prince asks the Swallow to pluck out his sapphire eyes and to deliver one to a poor little matchgirl, and the other to a starving man.
The Swallow begins to cry. ‘Dear Prince, I cannot do that.’ But obeying the Prince, he plucks out his eyes and delivers them, alleviating a little more pain of the hopeless city.
Winter, and its deathly chill, draws even nearer. The Swallow knows he will perish if he stays, but chooses to remain by the side of the blinded Prince. In comfort, he speaks to him of all the exotic adventures he has been on during his migrations to Egypt, regaling him with descriptions of the Nile, the palm trees, the majestic Sphinx.
The Prince replies, ‘Dear little Swallow, you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no mystery so great as misery.’
The Swallow, being the Prince’s eyes, flies around the city, and describes to him all that he sees: the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, the beggars sitting at the gates, the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets.
The Prince makes a final request: he asks the Swallow to remove all his gold leafing—all the remains of his splendour—and to give it to the poor.
The Swallow does so, without complaint.
Winter comes. The Swallow, faithful companion to the sightless Prince, lies dead and frozen at the his feet, and the heart of the Prince breaks in two.
Shortly after, the wealthy mayor passes by, notices how shabby the Prince looks. ‘The ruby has fallen out of his sword,’ he says, ‘his eyes are gone, and he is golden no longer ... he is little better than a beggar!’ Ignorant the Prince’s sacrifice, he has the statue melted down for its residual worth—all but his heart, which stubbornly would not melt, and so has it dumped with the city’s rubbish, along with the dead Swallow. The mayor then arranges for a statue of himself to replace the Prince—to the outrage of the city, because they all want effigies of themselves, and they begin to quarrel with one another.
The story ends with God. He asks an angel to bring him the two most precious things in the city, and the angel returns with the Prince’s heart and the dead Swallow. ‘You have rightly chosen,’ says God, ‘for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold, the Happy Prince shall praise me.’
Evoking responsiveness towards God, continued
I hope you listened to it: a summary doesn’t do justice, no more than a Wikipedia plot substitutes a movie. But I hope this fairytale illustrates the points that I’ve made.
In the affluent mayor and the greedy townsfolk, I saw myself, content in comfort, ignoring the physical and spiritual needs of the people around me. It echoed Christ’s statement, ‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Reading about the altruism of the Prince, I was filled with praise for Christ who also forsook his own glory out of love for a needy and thankless world. God’s uplifting of the deceased Swallow made me realise that, I too like the Swallow, had been longing for the transient pleasures of ‘Egypt’ whereas my real resting place is in a relationship with my Creator, bringing home to my imagination God’s promise that ‘that no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived the things God has prepared for those who love him,’ and that ‘the last will be first and the first will be last.’ Finishing this story, I felt like David after being told Nathan’s parable: I had condemned myself without realising it.
The scholar Charles G. Osgood puts it rightly when he says that great literature ‘extends [our] range of vision, intellectual, moral, spiritual; it expands the compass of our sympathy; it sharpens our discernment; it corrects our appraisal of all things.’ Fiction is not a replacement for Scripture, nor does it shine brighter. Rather, it helps to remove the scales of familiarity from our eyes so we can appreciate its statements. Literature is Peter’s rooster crowing at morning, waking us to repentance. It is the hem of Christ’s garment—by the Spirit, the power that flows through it and into us can bring us nearer to God. Literature may not be Jacob’s ladder by which we can reach heaven, but it provides a staff with which to walk the earth.
There are immoral stories out there—and I will deal with these in a separate blog. For now, know that great literature offers us concrete examples of virtue to emulate, and vice to repudiate. It provides vicarious practice of these virtues, forming us through imaginative experience. Literature can express God’s truths in new ways and lead us to bow our heads in worship. The accrual of all this may one day result in a change of character.
After all, if it got a cowardly young man like me to help out an unconscious stranger at bus stop, there must be something to it.
‘[Fiction offers] the reader vicarious practice in exercising virtue, which is not the same as actual practice, of course, but is nonetheless a practice by which habits of mind, ways of thinking and perceiving, accrue ... Just as water, over a long period of time, reshapes the land through which it runs, so too are we formed by the habit of reading good books well.’ – Karen Swallow Prior
