Humans are the most imitative of all creatures, Aristotle famously said. The wise philosopher knows what anyone knows who sees kids copying adult behavior. The Internet abounds with such videos. Sometimes amusing and sometimes horrifying, these clips show how much young minds look for cues on how to think, speak, and act. Even if those children simply try out some outrageous behavior, they are developing not only a sense of the world from what they observe, but also a sense of who they will be in that world.
In light of this important truth, what did one of our best modern Christian writers think about the kind of stories we should read? T. S. Eliot notes, “The fiction that we read affects our behavior towards our fellow men, affects our patterns of ourselves” (Selected Essays 347). If this is true for us, then how much more for our children? Now, no one would accuse Eliot of ever writing “on the nose” literature. That is not what he is talking about in this passage. He doesn’t mean for fiction to be nothing but the most obvious morality tales. The stories he wrote and would recommend can be subtle and rewarding in all kinds of fascinating ways.
What Eliot propounds here has to do with the soul of the fiction. What motivates authors to write, and what values do their characters display in their behavior and defend in their words? This is where Eliot would have us conduct some preliminary evaluation before we read. Why? He the poet gives much the same reason as the philosopher above: “When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behavior by his attitude towards the result of the behavior arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way.” Kids learn to act by watching others act. What a child experiments in behavior today can become a habit tomorrow. Imitation, or mimesis (think "miming" or "mimicking") remains one of the most powerful and pervasive causes for the way we humans act.
Eliot’s word benediction is an intentional one and deserves a closer look. It means a “word of blessing.” His suggestion is that we implicitly nod at behaviors we admire—even, or perhaps especially, in our entertainments. Whether we realize it or not, we add those admired behaviors to the “good” category in our thinking. We adjust our outlook. Those acts are now acceptable, we think, even cool. Do you hear kids talking like characters on television, movies, and online videos? Aristotle and Eliot give us insight why: they remind us that even our entertainments instruct our minds, train our emotional responses, inform our judgment. So we must choose even our diversions well.
The opening of the Book of Genesis gives a deeper reason. In every act of creation, God both creates and reflects on his creation. Maybe Eliot's word choice alludes to this divine act. After every act of creation in which God says “Let there be,” he always folllows with an “It is good” or “It is not good.” If what God makes is good, his act of creation stands. If what he makes is not good, he continues his story of creation to make it good and—if we follow that story to the end—redeem it beyond our wildest imagination.
We must remember that reading is a fundamentally creative act. What if we encouraged our kids to add good to good in their reading lives as the Creator does in these opening pages of Genesis? What if we encouraged them to discern the good from the bad in these initial encounters? And what if we encouraged them to either learn from the bad or redeem it to make the world a better place? Here is where the soul of fiction speaks directly to our souls. What a pattern for our children to follow!
Quick Takeaways:
- Imitation shapes identity.
- Stories influence values.
- Choose books wisely.
