Jonathan Gottschall: Chapter Summary

When I was a child, I remember reading wide variety of genres of adventure, mystery, history biography, fantasy books. They would make me feel as if I was in the protagonists’ shoes. Just like most kids, they follow whatever the rests of the kids are doing because when your young that small group of friends is all that you know. Also, when your young being different is looked down upon and mocked. None of kids I used to play with on my street liked to read books because they never understood how reading a book would ever help them, so I followed them and stopped reading. It wasn’t that they hated books; they just thought that books were a waste of time, boring, and didn’t teach anything. We just didn’t know any better. Then at the end of freshman
Using the example of asking his students the real reason they choose to read stories, he says that they read because its pleasurable and allows them to escape. He further explains that the real reason why we read is because “life is hard whereas Neverland is easy” (53). Then he goes on to explain the best of stories have a problem that the character is trying to solve. Per Gottschall, all great stories follow a certain formula but it’s the details that makes each story special. Gottschall points out that we use stories as potential roadmap to help us find solutions to the problems we will face throughout our lives. Gotschall concludes with we are attracted to fiction because it is good for us.
In Chapter 3: Hell Is Story Friendly of The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human American Literary scholar Jonathan Gottschall analyzes that we read stories to escape life, understand different types of feelings, learn how better approach a situation, and how we can use storytelling to learn lessons that we then use to better solve our own