Why do people enjoy fantasy stories?
I’ve been pondering this as of late, noticing the modern world’s fascination with fantasy, sci-fi, dystopia, and so on—anything make-believe. (Certainly, the genres of contemporary and historical fiction haven’t died, but fantasy seems like the preference of many, specifically the younger generation.)
Ultimately, how in line with Christian beliefs is this preference for strange worlds unlike our own? While Christ’s parables are often cited in support of stories’ power to portray truth, I’ve found fewer poignant arguments in favor of fantasy stories’ ability to be vehicles of the Gospel.1
Perhaps this is because there is an unconscious assumption that the marks of a Christian story are 1) explicit mention of God and matters of faith or 2) an implied Christian worldview of human affairs with no explicit mention of faith. Either of those can be used in a story with or without dragons and make-believe worlds. However, to regard fantasy as only an instrument of Christianity in so far as it can portray different worlds with religious structures like ours or a stage to exemplify Christian morality is to miss what I believe is fantasy’s best effect, and what makes it suited to be a uniquely powerful bearer of Truth. This very element may also be our unconscious reason for often preferring fantasy stories.
I believe fantasy is most powerful in its presentation of Truth when used for the purpose of Escape.
1 I don’t mean to imply that fictional stories are just Gospel tracts or catechisms. As the Greeks said, stories teach and delight, and it is often in delighting that they teach best, while in teaching only they tend to annoy and dissatisfy.
Escape and Escapism
If you ask any reader of fantasy why they prefer it to a contemporary fiction novel, it is unlikely that they will answer, “I want to go to another world that is exactly the same as my own down to the last detail of my neighbor’s annoyingly loud car and barking dog.” The reader of fantasy more likely wants a world with a character whose neighbor owns a large lizard for transportation, which is in the habit of eating the character’s fence when exceptionally hungry. Or something of that sort.
Fantasy is loved because it takes us someplace different—not entirely different, but at least quite a bit different. It is refreshing to read about fence-eating lizards when we are sick of annoying dogs.
Fantasy, then, is about escape. I do not say escapism, which is an immoral act of rejecting reality for something false. Certainly, fantasy’s use as an escape means it can also be used for escapism, but a reader’s moral reasons for venturing into make-believe worlds isn’t the topic of this article.
No, the Escape fantasy offers is completely opposite of escapism. Escapism is about fleeing what is real for the unreal. The Escape of good fantasy is about fleeing the unreal for the real.
I mean real not as in things we can touch and smell and taste—in that case of course everything in literature is a lie, a fiction. I mean real as in things as they really are, and our capacity to see those things as they really are. That can happen in “real life” or in a book. In real life or in a book I can see human creatures as pitiful, stupid animals made for work. Or I can see them as created in the image and likeness of God, wounded in nature, but with the capacity for heaven and the life of grace.
To flee the idea of men as created in the image and likeness of God, and instead read a story where we imagine all men were created for is to follow their impulses for pleasure—that is escapism. To flee the world’s idea of men as pitiful, stupid animals made to work and read a story where they are made in the image and likeness of God—that is Escape.
Tolkien, in his dense but enlightening essay On Fairy-Stories, puts it this way:
“In what misusers are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic… Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home?”
He goes on to imply that fantasy (fairy-stories, he calls them) has a capacity to bring us back to what is really true, really real. Not just cars and our schedules and the world around. But the realities beneath—love, justice, truth, wonder, and a right vision for the things we encounter every day. When the world, our fallen nature, or the devil dim and distort our view of reality, stories can reorient the vision of our hearts to see it aright.
Fantasy’s Peculiar Power
Perhaps it can be argued that any story can do this, not just fantasy. While all stories can re-offer us a right vision of things, the very strangeness of fantasy paradoxically equips it better to plunge us into the depths of reality.
Take Chesterton’s example about wonder:
“[Fantasy says] that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.”
The creations of fantasy can do more. All those dragons and kings and fence-eating lizards aren’t there just for fun. They can refresh our concept of what it is to fear and battle real evil, what authority really means beyond its distorted modern mask, and return us to the wild thrill that must have filled the human heart upon taming a beast. They can remind us what is like to encounter the holy, the good, the great—and so re-instill reverence in our hearts next time we approach the altar in our own lives.
Often this can happen without us even realizing it. That is the genius of authors like Tolkien and Andrew Peterson. We don’t realize we’re homesick for heaven until the Elves start singing of Valinor, and we remember what it is like to hurt and hope for a home we’re so far from. We can forget the curse of sin until we get inside the head of a human turned Fang, and feel all the shame and wickedness and hopelessness. The opposite can also occur. Fantasy’s peculiar power can also skew our vision to view the good as evil, as much as it can help us view the good as truly good.
Ultimately, fantasy’s poignant, strange yet familiar images have the power to reorient our hearts to view reality aright, and Escape from the lies of the world or our own hearts. Even if we’re only diving into make-believe worlds to tune out our humdrum lives for a while, perhaps there is also a deep, unspoken hope of reencountering the romance and truth of reality within those pages.
Despite how fantasy can be used for escapism, perhaps we ultimately enjoy fantasy so much because we were created to know Truth, and good fantasy helps us escape from lies and rediscover that Truth.