The Act of Reading
Why Fiction Shapes Us
Long before we grasp the abracadabra of grammar, we understand stories. Stories are the natural language of the conscious mind, a primary way of making sense of the world that grows naturally from our impulses to tell and listen. But for this article I want to focus in particular on reading stories. Why? Because I believe that reading opens up an extra faculty for perceiving the world and connecting with other human beings. It acts as a medium for the unknown through the known.
Sadly enough, a sense of shared humanity, often elusive in our everyday lives, is more of a skill that needs to be cultivated nowadays. And paradoxically enough, by removing ourselves from the immediate reality and taking a dive into the fictional world, we gain a better understanding of our own. I do, and I suspect it might resonate with others as well.
That’s why I decided to jot down some of my musings about fiction and what it does to me and my fellow readers. I am writing whatever feels right in the moment, so this piece can get academical, informational, whimsical, and irrational at any time. My hope is that, in reading it, you’ll find some of the same joy and connection that I find in scribing it.
The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is…
Marcel Proust
Stories once-upon-a-timed us into the universe of embodied cognition
I always begin from the very beginning. No exceptions here. Let’s start from the start of every person’s immersion into fiction. Why are we captivated by lullabies and fairy tales from the cradle? That’s a narrative instinct showing itself. Before we can even put together some thoughts, we engage with stories — whether through spoken words, images, or even gestures. We understand cause and effect and explore ideas beyond our immediate surroundings, not just consume the made-up content.
Our brains are wired for storytelling because its function extends far beyond blend information processing. Consider this: an article from the National Institutes of Health shows that storytelling creates a multisensory, interactive experience in the brain, hooking both listeners’ auditory and visual processing areas. In this way, narrative transforms information into memorable and meaningful knowledge as opposed to mere facts.
Another scientific feature on silent reading highlights how looking at letters with our eyes engages brain activity of the areas related not just to language processing but also emotional and sensory regions, making the whole experience similar to how we experience real-life events. Oh, and motor regions as well. Ha? Motor cortex becomes active when people read about physical actions in stories. This phenomenon is known as “embodied cognition” — when we read words describing actions like running, jumping, or even simple hand movements, the brain simulates those experiences. That’s why stories feel so bizarrely absorbing. Perhaps that’s the strangest magic of all: fiction turns neurons into narrative, and somehow, we become the story.
And I am done with the science part of it.
Tell me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.
Native American proverb
But why are fictions so fundamental?
The answer is simple as beginnings, middles, and ends. This holy trinity of composition reflects the way our minds organize and process information. We seek connections, causes and effects, a clear path from point A to point B. So fiction creates this framework for us in a safe and controlled environment of stories, where we can explore fantastical worlds, experience danger, and collide head-on with complex emotions without facing real-world consequences. Creating and experiencing through stories is the 5th dimension of our lives.
For me it all began in early childhood when my imagination was first introduced to the sparkling world of fairy tales and myths. My favourite one was Sleeping Beauty. Back then, I didn’t overanalyze why I loved it so much or what parts of me resonated with the story. I just enjoyed it and that was enough to keep me entertained and connected to the universal imaginative experience.
But why does this genre of literature bewitch children? The answer lies in their magical spark — an element that fires up a child’s imagination, where everything feels new and fresh. Then comes a clear structure that only reinforces the charm of the story: a princess cursed, a kingdom asleep, a prince’s kiss breaking the spell. This predictability creates a sense of security and comfort, especially for little humans who don’t yet know about the complexities of the world or human psyche.
Fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty traverse beyond simple entertainment. They sneakily present a distinction between good and evil, helping us grasp and distinguish basic moral concepts — the importance of kindness and the dangers of jealousy. As children, we swallow these lessons effortlessly. The story’s themes — such as the inescapable pull of destiny and the power of love — shaped my moral compass long before I could articulate them. Looking back, I now see Aurora’s story as more than a tale of romance: it is full of collective patterns, the hero’s journey, and deeper truths about life. But that’s a topic for another day.
“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón
A magnifying glass, a telescope, a mirror — 3 faces of reading
The power of storytelling extends beyond childhood. As we grow, the stories we take in evolve, but the magnetic pull remains the same. Novels, movies, and personal anecdotes continue to offer scaffolds for surfing through life complexities, making the jumble of experiences we encounter throughout the day feel coherent and meaningful. Think about how we explain even the most mundane events: a shopping trip, a conversation with a friend, even a traffic jam, using the language of mini-narratives. Because in every narrative, there is a lesson to be learned, a truth to be discovered, and a connection to be made. There we find a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. Yet everyone has to discover the answer for themselves.
That’s why I love entering the worlds created between book covers — there are countless questions and unending, shape-shifting answers waiting for the reader to bring them to life. It’s like peering straight into the soul of a stranger and watching their thoughts, fears, and the quiet battles simmering inside them. As readers, we are granted a godlike perspective, looking at their lives unfold with our mind’s eye. What appears as an end-of-life event for a character often reveals itself as a fated stitch in the grand scheme of the story.
Their struggles shape and redefine them: a chance meeting, a quiet conversation, a brief glance — these bare-bone moments are the secret building blocks of destiny. Novels have the power to compress years into chapters and show us how these subtle events shape our earthly tenure and help us appreciate the unfolding of our own lived arc.
Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.
Virginia Woolf
Losing ourselves in the lives of fictional characters is like looking into a hall of mirrors. We see the universal ache of longing, the sting of rejection, and the fear of falling short. These communal experiences create empathy and connect us to the protagonists, antagonists, and ourselves. In this shared humanity, we find comfort in understanding that we are not alone in our hardships. And this realization actually helps us zoom out of them and see challenges as milestones instead of disasters. Of course, some remain genuine catastrophes and there is no amount of optimism to cloak it, as in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
The novel illustrates how seemingly insignificant events can have profound consequences. A chance meeting at a train station and a tragic accident set the stage for Anna’s downfall. Her encounter with Count Vronsky, while she is still a wife and mother, leads to a forbidden affair. The accidental death of a station guard adds a layer of ominous foreshadowing to the narrative. But we, as readers, must pay attention to these subtle stacks of events to see the bigger picture at the end. The soul of the plot lies in their alchemizing relationship and Anna’s inner turbulence.
Returning to the train station in a state of emotional turmoil, Anna’s story comes full circle as she throws herself under a train. Her suicide becomes a symbolic echo of the accident that occurred when she first met Vronsky. These moments puncture the beginning and end of Anna’s ruination and show the interconnectedness of fate, choice, and consequences in the novel. Was her decision the correct one? The bad, sinful, fateful, pivotal? The answer lies in the heart of the reader and their moral prism.
Silence either-or logic, starfield of options is speaking
The same goes for the age-old question: are people inherently good or bad? Literature turns this black&white binary into a range of everything. Alexandre Dumas’s novel, The Count of Monte Cristo explores it in a classic and a slightly simplistic way. Lots of us know Edmond Dantes, a young sailor — honest, loyal, and kind — whose world crumbles when jealous friends frame him for treason. Yet within the darkness of the prison and betrayal, Edmond meets a fellow inmate, priest Abbe Faria, who becomes his mentor and teacher. After 8 years of absorbing his teachings, Dantes receives a treasure map and a mindset of determination. He escapes prison, morphs into a wealthy and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo, and starts his revenge quest. But as his obsession grows, he finally sees that revenge is empty. In a moment of truth, he lets go of his anger and chooses forgiveness instead. “”Then I forgive you,” said the man, dropping his cloak, and advancing to the light.””
A typical and mythical tale of suffering and redemption, wrapped in drama and adventure. And yet, as you morph with the hero’s journey-his feelings and motivations- this universal theme grows a human skin and feels more raw and relatable to our own lives. We draw parallels to the scenarios from our experience and if lucky and reflective enough -we even make new connections and earn insights that untangle some of our own issues.
Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another.
George Saunders
But what about those irrational and mind-boggling pieces of life that can’t be penetrated with logic? Fiction doesn’t shy away from these ambiguities; it doesn’t offer easy answers either. In this way, literature persuades us to befriend the paradox. Take the sudden and inexplicable transformation of Gregor Samsa into a large insect in Kafka’s Metamorphosis. We are thrown into a world of absurdity with no answers. The novella doesn’t give psychological or philosophical clues; it simply presents us an irrefutable fact: once a responsible provider for his family, Gregor turns into an annoying burden. Yet what a powerful thought-starter this piece is. By inducing the feelings of unease and existential nausea, Kafka makes us question what we know about our identity, the nature of reality, and the meaning of it all.
This genre tops my list because my brain loves a good philosophical workout. Once you escape the hamster wheel of work, eat, repeat, you can’t avoid giving a good old think to the why behind it all. But where does it lead? That’s up to your perspective. If you’re drawn to the existential rabbit hole, absurdist thinkers like Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, and Kurt Vonnegut are waiting for you, offering not answers but thought-provoking dead ends. Bleak? Maybe. Essential? Absolutely. These authors turn the mundane into profound, making you laugh, cry, and question reality in equal measure. It’s existential dread with a side of genius — my brain’s favorite flavor.
“A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When a society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society.”
― Robert McKee
Of course, as literature explores individual dilemmas, it doesn’t ignore the collective. If one person is a universe unto themselves, what can we say about a world made up of billions of these universes? Add all the systems, traditions, cultures — our reality is truly complex and multi-faceted. And fiction reflects this complex reality and helps us make sense of it, one book at a time. Just as absurdist literature digs into the existential crisis of the individual, realist works like John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath explore vast societal changes through the lens of ordinary lives.
Through the Joad family’s migration during the Great Depression, we see the struggles of millions of displaced Americans. Tom Joad’s journey is deeply personal yet universal; it reflects exploitation, generational conflict, and the internal clash of identity. Steinbeck’s gift lies in making the personal primal. Just read Tom’s reflections — how much philosophical schools and debates are packed into these few sentences:
“Before I knowed it, I was sayin’ out loud, ‘The hell with it! There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing.’ . . . . I says, ‘What’s this call, this sperit?’ An’ I says, ‘It’s love. I love people so much I’m fit to bust, sometimes.’ . . . . I figgered, ‘Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,’ I figgered, ‘maybe it’s all men an’ all women we love; maybe that’s the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of.’ Now I sat there thinkin’ it, an’ all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.”
Steinbeck’s unvarnished articulation is uncanny. No surprise that the Nobel committee recognized him for: “ realistic and evocative prose, which has combined sympathetic insight into the plight of the common man with a keen awareness of the social and historical forces that shape his destiny.” He does have a gift for fractals, he shows us how the smallest details of existence are copied in the grandest designs.
Some writers take us on a quest through entire systems and paradigms without ever lecturing us. They don’t point at the big picture but stitch together pins and glimmers of life, making us perceive the larger forces behind them. Tom Joad’s story mirrors this complex architecture — his life is shaped by the harsh realities of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression and caught in the web of more subtle collective traditions. His worldview goes beyond the personal, it appears as an internal organ of the collective reality of migrant workers, revealing life’s raw, relentless pulse through Tom’s growing awareness. And as diligent readers, it’s our task to hunt down these overarching themes camouflaged within life’s smaller details.
Everything is everything
Then, there are the writers who reverse the lens. They give us the same nuts and bolts- some space, some time, someones’ legs, and their mind’s eyes-but instead of guiding us toward the macrocosm, they take us down into the microcosm. They magnify the snapshot of life, making it blissfully irrational and strictly personal. This is the territory of magical realism, my favorite genre. Here, mystery doesn’t descend from the sky, nor does it require elaborate worldbuilding like in fantasy or science fiction. It hums and pulses behind everyday objects, waiting for a sharp eye to notice.
For now, I don’t feel like adding anything from myself to this claim, but I will leave you with quotes:
“When we read, it is not ours to absorb all that is written. Our thoughts are jealous and they constantly blank out the thoughts of others, for there is not room enough in us for two scents at one time.”
― Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 Words
“At times, he felt that beneath every word there ought to be something solid and heavy, and each word should speak of something that can lift him up or move him from place to place, like a winch raises scaffolding, otherwise, it would be like a bird without legs, unable to land and forced to build its nest and raise its young on the water.”
― Milorad Pavić, The Inner Side of the Wind, or A Novel of Hero and Leander
“My heart has more rooms in it than a whore house.”
— Gabriel García Márquez
“Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
“It was inevitable: the smell of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold
The strange association between the smell of almonds and love hints to the surreal connections we make, illogical yet deeply felt.
“The old man with enormous wings was not a miracle, but a man who had fallen from the sky, and nobody knew what to do with him.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
This line highlights the surreal nature of human encounters with the extraordinary, questioning our responses to the bizarre.
“His wings were drenched in mud, and he looked like a decrepit angel, a worn-out miracle that had lost its meaning.”
The description of the old man blurs the line between the divine and the mundane.
“They had no idea if he was an angel or a demon, but they treated him like a circus attraction, as if his existence was a part of their everyday lives.”
This reflects the absurdity of how society can commodify the miraculous and turn something surreal into a spectacle.
“The woman who had been transformed into a spider became a greater source of pity than the old man with wings, who had lost all of his power.”
The contrast between the two figures evokes a surreal sense of empathy, where the extraordinary becomes normalized and forgotten.
Philip K. Dick made me do it
There is no tidy conclusion to my piece about reading. Quoting Philip K. Dick, “The problem with introspection is that it has no end.” If reading and introspection are infinite loops, why should this text try to wrap itself up neatly?
