y son came back from school a couple of weeks ago and told me that his teacher had said that “nonfiction was better than fiction,” because it talked about “real things,” and was therefore, presumably, more instructive.
Maybe I’m making too much of a second-hand comment, but I have to confess that my blood boiled for a moment. It sounded like something straight out of Common Core, which puts an emphasis on “informational texts” over storytelling, especially as students get older.
And yet, when it comes to learning how to make arguments, debate values, or grasp difficult concepts, storytelling plays a crucial role. In fact, I would argue that storytelling is the single most powerful teaching tool we can use.
Don’t believe me? Consider the case of Scheherazade.
This Persian queen has captured the imagination of Western artists ever since Antoine Galland published his translation of The 1001 Nights, and I’ll admit that she’s always been a kind of muse and mentor for me. Tradition tells us that she told tales every night to her royal husband in order to hold off a death sentence. Did she exist in real history? Probably not, but that’s beside the point. She’s a totally unique character: the storyteller as heroine.
Most people know the outlines of the story. Betrayed by his first wife, King Shahryar is convinced that women are incapable of fidelity, and therefore evil. He takes a virgin bride every night – first from the ranks of nobles, then from the army officers, and then from the merchants and commoners – and has her executed in the morning. As the narrative goes: “He continued to do this until all the girls perished, their mothers mourned, and there arose a clamor among the fathers and mothers, who called a plague upon his head, complained to the Creator of the heavens, and called for help on Him who hears and answers prayers.”
Shahryar is more than your usual despot – he was once, by all accounts, a decent ruler and a reasonable man. His actions are not merely disturbing in themselves, they are a tear in the fabric of all that is considered right and just. He’s supposed to be setting an example for his people. Instead he’s possessed.
Scheherazade offers to become his next bride because she has a plan. According to the story, she had “perused the books, annals, and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples, and instances of bygone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts, and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred.”
Notice, there, that she reads considerably more than just “informational texts.” Her reading covers a wide range of areas and there’s something gloriously indulgent about all of it, as if she treated her library like a smorgasbord for the mind.
It’s curious that this intellectual side of Scheherazade is rarely emphasized in Western depictions of her. (If you need any evidence of that, just Google her name and take a look at the images that pop up.) Moroccan scholar Fatema Mernissi, who explored the subject in her book, Scheherazade Goes West, sees this disconnect as emblematic of the contrasting ways in which Eastern and Western societies define eroticism, power, and the relationship between the sexes.
While Western culture tends to see Scheherazade as a kind of entertaining seductress, Eastern tradition considers her intellect to be her ultimate weapon against Shahryar. Yet it’s a weapon employed for a higher purpose. Scheherazade’s motivation is never personal gain, but to change his murderous ways.
Scheherazade uses all her skills to craft stories that allow the King to see into his own mind and heart. Gradually, he softens, and finally he chooses to become a better man. (We’ll leave it to people with no sense of romance in them to complain that serial killers don’t deserve a second chance at love.)
My point is this: how Scheherazade manages to save the day reflects on the very nature of storytelling itself, and how it can work on the hearts and minds of readers.
Stories As Teachers
In his paper, “Scheherazade’s Secret: the Power of Stories and the Desire to Learn,” Peter Willis of the University of South Australia discusses how stories can become powerful learning tools that go beyond merely gaining information or transferring skills. They can, he says, affect the way people see and act in the world, to the point of changing their identity.
Marketers understand this very well, which is why they talk a lot about how storytelling can drive business. But there’s a difference between stories that affect readers (used often for marketing purposes and propaganda) and those that help readers make sense of experiences, and I think that the best storytelling falls into the latter category. Scheherazade didn’t merely entertain or preach; she enacted a transformation in the King by helping him understand himself.
Willis identifies certain elements present in stories that can transform a person through a process he calls “imaginal knowing.”
First, these stories have a sense of the mythopoetic; that is to say, the great human themes that exist in life, such as birth and death, love and sex, conflict and resolution, etc. (Even a story told as “mere entertainment” needs a hint of this in order to engage the audience.)
Shakespeare wrote completely in terms of the mythopoetic. He also possessed in abundance what Willis considers another important element for storytelling: appropriate literary artistry. All good stories seek to capture the imagination of the audience, and to do so requires a seemingly effortless (but well-practiced) craft.
A third element is dramatic form. A narrative may be told only through words, or it may involve music, drama, or poetry, to enhance the telling. Shakespeare made liberal use of other mediums. So does musical theater.
More elaborately, A.S. Byatt’s novel Possession handles a complex storyline through fiction, poetry, fake scholarly treatises, fairy tales, and more. Each narrative fragment offers another piece for solving the novel’s big puzzle, while at the same time speaking to broader themes, such as the limits of scholarship.
Finally, there’s delayed and dramatic denouement. Scheherazade took the dramatic tension to new heights when she left each story unfinished by sunrise, but ultimately a story needs an ending that doesn’t simply tie up the loose ends, but gives the audience a sense that something has been revealed. This revelation, as Willis points out, can be something quite different from what was expected.
It’s probably not a stretch to say that a lasting story – that is, one that transcends time and culture – needs to have at least some of these qualities. Shakespeare’s plays can still speak to audiences after more than 400 years. That’s no accident. It’s just great storytelling.
Is Fiction More True Than Non-Fiction?
As a teacher, I’ve told my students in both fiction workshops and history classes that storytelling is key to really understanding the course of human events.
We may read that 20,000,000 or so people died under Stalin, but that figure by itself doesn’t register if we don’t know what it meant for those who experienced it. The story of one person surviving the Gulag can speak louder than a book of statistics. Characters are the vehicle that takes readers into the reality of a situation.
But a character doesn’t have to be “real” to matter this way. Charles Darnay and Madame Defarge can tell us plenty about the French Revolution, and about human nature. The recent children’s novel Wonder had a powerful effect on my young son, and changed the way he saw people with birth defects.
I’m not arguing that fiction is better than nonfiction, or vice versa. But done well, fiction can help people understand better. At the very least, it encourages deep thinking in a way informational texts rarely can.
So I tell my son: don’t stop reading fiction. Read everything, like Scheherazade did, and let her be your mentor, too. The world is certainly full of Sharayars, and one never knows when all that reading might come in handy.