Why We All Need Fairytales
Because fantasy is not just escapism.
Postpartum depression made the windows hazy, the glass through which I saw the world clouded and misshapen. The abuse I endured, that I would only years later realize as such, added more dust and grime that made it harder to see even the bright light of the rising of the sun. All I could perceive was darkness—a world void of beauty and hope.
I struggled to see reality for what it was—to see hope, justice, and goodness still followed me in the land of the living. The familiarity to these beauties didn’t help; I had been writing about all of them for several years through nonfiction, and at this point in my life they fell flat and dull. I held them up in the light and turned them in every angle, but I saw nothing to sustain me.
I needed recovery, the kind that fairyland can offer. By writing, reading, and imagining those kinds of stories, I saw through the glass again.
Fantasy can be seen as escapism and a waste of time because it doesn’t deal in “reality.” Perhaps us authors and readers of it are merely playing and not growing in any meaningful way. Yet I found healing, through both writing and reading, in fairyland.
Storytelling teaches in a way self-help books never could; it provides the many-faceted nuances of this world by following a variety of characters in their own unique situations and presents the truth in a way that grips our imagination without feeling abrasive. The same truths that someone may have once told us plainly to our face are felt much differently when seen through the story of another person. C. S. Lewis says this is why he wrote The Chronicles of Narnia:
I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.1
I first began writing fairytales for myself, to find light in the Shadowland I lived in. But now I write in hopes that others who find themselves in such hazy darkness might take hold of hope again like I did through those same stories.
This is why I believe all good fiction is about hope.
When I say that I believe all good fiction is about hope, I don’t mean every book must end with “Happily Ever After.” Hope is the slice of light flickering through the storm clouds, the nightlight in the dark bedroom, a daisy poking up through the concrete slabs, a sapling growing up from a rotten log. Hope often begins in small ways in desolate places. Sometimes that’s all we need, and all good fiction should do that.
Consider the dystopian novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy: it details the harrowing and bitter wanderings of a father and son through the remains of a world of falling ash and abandoned buildings as they seek refuge and provisions while avoiding cannibals. Yet the story is a testament that goodness remains even in the most morbid and darkest of worlds, and that good people will never be completely wiped away amid any tragedy. Though the man doesn’t dare allow himself to think of or remember beauty and goodness, though nobody is trustworthy, he tells his boy, “You have to carry the fire.”2
You have to carry the fire. I dont know how to. Yes you do. Is it real? The fire? Yes it is. Where is it? I dont know where it is. Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it.
There is hope, even in this dark book.
Tolkien discussed the accusation that fantasy fiction is mere escapism. He reminded his opponents that good fiction provides the escape of the prisoner from the prison cell back into the light of day—not the flight of the ordinary man from his everyday responsibilities:
Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in a prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter.3
This is what good fiction offers: it is the key from the prison cell of fear, dismay, and sadness that comes with living in a broken world. It’s not a blanket over our heads to hide from the realities of living among thorns and thistles, but a hand turning our gaze to see the beam of sun coming through the prison bars—or perhaps clearing the foggy window. It reminds us that life and beauty and goodness still exist and are waiting for us. These stories help us see the hope that exists for us while we are still in the darkness.
Three Books for Kids That Give Hope
Out of the Shadow World by Colleen Chao. A middle-grade novel about a boy who has cancer and his friend who is trying to understand him. They are both transported to a magical world unlike our own where they learn the hope that Jesus offers in suffering.
All From a Walnut by A.J. Paquette and Felicita Sala. While not a Christian story, this book shows how we can have hope even after someone dies because our memories of them are carried with us.
The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde. A story about a really terrible giant who learns to love others and share his beautiful garden with the local children. It’s a story of how even the most terrible of people can change.
C. S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature, ed. Owen Barfield and Walter Hooper (1966; repr., New York, New York, United States of America: HarperCollins, 2017), 70.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road (New York, New York, United States of America: Vintage Books, 2006), 278–279.
J. R. R. Tolkien, Tolkien on Fairy-stories: Expanded edition, with commentary and notes, ed. Verlyn Flieger and Douglas Anderson (1933; repr., London Bridge Street, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Harper Collins Publishers, 2008), 85.
Amen, sister!