04-26-2014, 07:24 PM
I've just got done reading for the 3rd time American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Lots of times after I've read a book or watched a good movie I feel a bit whimsical, like anything is possible so while I'm sort of high off that feeling I thought I'd type my thoughts here about stories. I'm gonna put the spoiler tag around it though as it is a bit long to read.
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SpoilerFirst off, stories are weird. Not good weird or bad weird, just weird. Stories do so many things in my mind like a good magic trick or illusion. You know something happened that you could probably explain logically but for the moment you ask "How did they do that?" Take the book I just mentioned. You don't know where it is taking you, you don't know exactly what it is about, and at the end of it you really don't know whether anything really was resolved or not. But at the same time, I had fun reading it and all the different characters you get to meet through the eyes of the protagonist, all the different places, and how it all somehow comes together.
I'll summarize the story as best as I can. It is about a man called Shadow who is a convicted felon waiting out his last few days before his release. He has a wife called Laura waiting for him at home, but the second to last day before his release he is told she died and he is let out early for the funeral. He meets a man called Wednesday who offers him a job. From there is it s a giant love letter to so many things. To the idea of immigrants, gods, what it is to be an American, America itself, road trips, loyalty, betrayal, sacrifice, and so many other things and sometimes none of these things.
But I'm not typing this about the book I just read, as the title implies and what I just said at the beginning; it's about stories and what they mean to me and anyone else.
Stories I feel to me are the things that keep us going. They allow us who can't, to be other people for a time. They allow us to explore ideas and things we don't really ever get the chance to. Hell, it allows us to know these ideas exist whatever ideas those may be. School teaches us many things. Teaches us how to write, how to read, how to add and subtract. Even teaches us some useful things too like in science class about various topics like plants and animals and how gravity works.
But with stories they teach you something completely different and it is different for every person I think. For me, they teach you in little tiny bits what it means to and how to be human.
Think about it, fairy tales alone teach you some good life lessons whether that was the lesson it was intending to teach. Joseph Campbell wrote many thing regarding myths, about how from culture to culture they all contain the same themes, the same lessons. Some are about rites of passages, some are weird history lessons, some are just ways for mankind to make sense out of the world.
I think that stories are a way for us to connect to each other in a way that is hard to express out loud or to even find the word for. Sometimes it takes a really skilled writer/author to find the words that express the very thing we all think about but can't say for certain what it is.
So I will end this kinda/sorta ramble with a simple question which even as I'm think of it sounds like a really dumb essay question but you of course can keep it short if you wish: What is your favorite story or even the worst story (any story is good) and why? Can even be a movie or video game too if you like so long as it has a story attached that you were interested in.
To start, I'll say it is a tie between American Gods the one I mentioned and The Scions of Shannara. American Gods because it is a great story about ideas, how we all carry them inside us. In our heads or hearts they are there, and it is about what happens when you carry those ideas to a place that isn't that great of a place for them. Good for the people thinking of the ideas but bad for the idea itself. Too many ideas in one place with too many taking the spotlight.
The other was the first book I read that really got me interested in reading fantasy to start but also other books as well. Sure I read Harry Potter before that and Lord of the Rings too, but those books I read because the movies were there too. I read them because another medium in its own way tricked me into it. Scions of Shannara wasn't a book that turned into a film, it was just a book. The cover had a group of people standing by a dark pool of water with specters and ghosts rising from the pool and a dark cloaked figure in the middle towering over the group. That was all I needed to be interested and from there I got more into video games and other movies because of reading these other stories which lead to others as well.
I'll summarize the story as best as I can. It is about a man called Shadow who is a convicted felon waiting out his last few days before his release. He has a wife called Laura waiting for him at home, but the second to last day before his release he is told she died and he is let out early for the funeral. He meets a man called Wednesday who offers him a job. From there is it s a giant love letter to so many things. To the idea of immigrants, gods, what it is to be an American, America itself, road trips, loyalty, betrayal, sacrifice, and so many other things and sometimes none of these things.
But I'm not typing this about the book I just read, as the title implies and what I just said at the beginning; it's about stories and what they mean to me and anyone else.
Stories I feel to me are the things that keep us going. They allow us who can't, to be other people for a time. They allow us to explore ideas and things we don't really ever get the chance to. Hell, it allows us to know these ideas exist whatever ideas those may be. School teaches us many things. Teaches us how to write, how to read, how to add and subtract. Even teaches us some useful things too like in science class about various topics like plants and animals and how gravity works.
But with stories they teach you something completely different and it is different for every person I think. For me, they teach you in little tiny bits what it means to and how to be human.
Think about it, fairy tales alone teach you some good life lessons whether that was the lesson it was intending to teach. Joseph Campbell wrote many thing regarding myths, about how from culture to culture they all contain the same themes, the same lessons. Some are about rites of passages, some are weird history lessons, some are just ways for mankind to make sense out of the world.
I think that stories are a way for us to connect to each other in a way that is hard to express out loud or to even find the word for. Sometimes it takes a really skilled writer/author to find the words that express the very thing we all think about but can't say for certain what it is.
So I will end this kinda/sorta ramble with a simple question which even as I'm think of it sounds like a really dumb essay question but you of course can keep it short if you wish: What is your favorite story or even the worst story (any story is good) and why? Can even be a movie or video game too if you like so long as it has a story attached that you were interested in.
To start, I'll say it is a tie between American Gods the one I mentioned and The Scions of Shannara. American Gods because it is a great story about ideas, how we all carry them inside us. In our heads or hearts they are there, and it is about what happens when you carry those ideas to a place that isn't that great of a place for them. Good for the people thinking of the ideas but bad for the idea itself. Too many ideas in one place with too many taking the spotlight.
The other was the first book I read that really got me interested in reading fantasy to start but also other books as well. Sure I read Harry Potter before that and Lord of the Rings too, but those books I read because the movies were there too. I read them because another medium in its own way tricked me into it. Scions of Shannara wasn't a book that turned into a film, it was just a book. The cover had a group of people standing by a dark pool of water with specters and ghosts rising from the pool and a dark cloaked figure in the middle towering over the group. That was all I needed to be interested and from there I got more into video games and other movies because of reading these other stories which lead to others as well.
