北大医学部复习资料why do we read fiction.docx

Warren starts simple, with a thesis statement that summarizes in the language of the obvious; the non-scholar need go no further. Why do we read fiction? The answer is simple. We read it because we like it. And we like it because fiction, as an image of life, stimulates and gratifies our interest in life. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- He then suggests a storys conflict is the main attraction, because it is exciting and because it reflects the conflicts the reader has in her own life -- but with a crucial difference: The fictional conflict offers a well-defined resolution. A story is not merely an image of life, but of life in motion ... facing a problem, a conflict. We are in suspense about the story in fiction because we are in suspense about another story ... -- the story of our own life as we live it. Even when we read, as we say, to escape, we seek to escape not from life but to life, to a life more satisfying than our own drab version. .... In this sense, then, fiction painlessly makes up for the defects of reality. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once it has attracted the attention and engaged the interest, successful fiction encourages the reader to take part: to identify with the character(s) and role-play their activities, while simultaneously maintaining a separate perspective as an observer. In other words, to enter into that publicly available daydream which fiction is .... The more sophisticated reader plays a deep double game with himself; one part of him is identified with a character ... while another part holds aloof to respond, interpret and judge. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This dual perspective -- evaluation and empathy, being both observer and observed -- conditions the reader to reconsider her own life in the same fashion, and helps to establish the intellectual distance necessa