Why Do People Enjoy "Sad" Books?

Dear Kira,

I'm aware that it's not my turn to write on this blog, however, you're taking a long time to respond to my last post and I have stuff to say! (Don't think this gets you out of answering both questions though!)

So, yesterday, you and I went to see the movie Me Before You (which is based on a book, which makes it relevant to this blog). Spoiler alert if you haven't seen the movie or read the book: it's extremely sad. Even so, we both really enjoyed the movie. (Spoiler alert: Emilia Clarke's eyebrows are amazing.) That's kind of weird, isn't it? Ordinarily, people don't enjoy being sad. Naturally, most people prefer to be happy (well, except Eeyore, but he's a donkey). So, why do so many people (us included) watch and enjoy sad movies and read sad books, even if it makes them sad?

I suppose that the cynical answer would be that, on some level, people get some sort of pleasure out of the sadness and pain of others. Some might argue that people enjoy other people's sadness because their own lives are too boring or ordinary. That sounds a little sadistic, doesn't it?

On the other hand, a more optimistic person might argue that reading a sad book helps people to deal with pain and problems in their own lives.

I suspect that both of those analyses are correct in certain contexts. However, for most people, I think that the answer is somewhere in the middle. I think that most people have natural curiosity about the life experiences of others. Humans are, after all, social animals. It makes sense that we are invested and interested in the lives of others. But why do we enjoy observing other peoples' lives when they're sad?

Even in the case of fictional stories like Me Before You, we as viewers identify with the characters on a human level because they are having human experiences. And, in the spectrum of human experience, extreme emotions and heightened situations are most compelling and interesting. Sadness is perhaps one of the most extreme emotions. Although too much sadness can be exhausting and emotionally draining, there is also something interesting about watching characters cope with and come to terms with these feelings. Simply put, it's compelling to watch characters struggle with emotions that most of us have experienced at one point, even if the character's experience is much more extreme and dramatic. For example, in Me Before You, Louisa Clark cares for (and basically falls in love with) a disabled man. Most people have not had this experience. Yet, they can relate on some level. Viewers enjoy seeing how the characters
choose to deal with these extreme situations and heightened emotions, and they can imagine how they themselves would react in this situation.

So, why do you think people enjoy sad movies and books? What do you think of Emilia Clarke's eyebrows?  

MC

Reader, Not Writer

Dear Kira,

Yes, it's been a horribly long time since anyone has written on this blog; however, I think it's safe to say that we've both learned a lot about English and writing in the past two years so, hopefully, the blog will be the better for it.

In your last blog, you talked about a fear of reading too much into a novel -- the danger of extrapolating too much from insignificant details. This is the perennial problem of being an English major -- sometimes you're making good points; sometimes you're just making stuff up (roughly seventy percent of all essays ever written). For example, I think we've all been in situations in classes when professors say something to the effect of, "actually, Romeo & Juliet is a criticism of global warming" and everyone rolls their eyes.

English is a great field because every theory and opinion is, theoretically, equally valid. That being said, there are obviously cases where people take this sort of intellectual liberty too far. In one particular class, I remember the professor making a big deal about the amount of walking characters do in Henry IV part 1. Maybe there's a valid point there, but, in Shakespeare's time, if you didn't have a horse, what were your other options? I'm pretty sure Falstaff didn't drive a Prius. I think the problem is that too many people assume that the author does everything with intent. Sure, there is such a thing as authorial intent (for example, C.S. Lewis is very famous for putting allusions to Christianity in the Narnia books), but not every word is selected with a motive in mind. There's definately a balance between taking the author's perspective into account and analyzing every word to death because you want to be the 101th person to write a book about Romeo & Juliet.

On the flip side, there are books in which absolutely nothing is intended -- tabula rasa, if you will. For example, if you read Twilight, you could probably pick out all the times the words "rain" and "blood" are mentioned and write a pretty convincing essay about the symbolism of water in contrast with the symbolism of blood. Did the author intend this? Probably not -- she doesn't seem very bright.
However, lest you think me an enemy to Formalism and New Criticism, I will say that authorial intent isn't the only thing that matters. What is important, in my opinion, is that the text speaks to you in some way. So, if the rain in Twilight is really inspiring to you and meaningful in your life, maybe you should have a theory about it. While I believe that it's important to keep the author in mind, the meaning of the text is really more dependent on the reader than the writer. Shakespeare is a good example of this because people love to have theories about Shakespeare (in case you're wondering, I too am guilty, guilty, guilty). Last year, I wrote a paper about the role of women in war in the Henriad plays. Now, I'm fairly certain that feminist criticism wasn't at the front of Shakespeare's mind when he was writing these plays (actually, I do have theories about what he actually intended). However, I'm female so, naturally, the women in the plays are interesting to me. In this case, I think the important thing is that interpretations of texts have relevance to the lives of the interpreters and the lives of other people who share their worldview.

So, should all the fourteen year olds in the world be writing about symbolism in the work of Stephanie Meyer? I think their English teachers would probably disagree. If any individual can find validity in any text that speaks to them, what does this say about so-called "classics." Is a classic worthwhile even if it doesn't speak to you? Or, is it a classic because it speaks to many people?

MC

The Importance of Close Reading

Dear Kira,

I'm an English major who doesn't really like being an English major.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading Shakespeare and stuff like that, but a lot of stuff that goes on in upper level English classes seems kind of stupid to me. I mean, I don't need an old guy in a crazy tie asking me: "what is rhetoric? what is it really?". I used to feel that way about close reading. Because, let's face it, when you have a half an hour of lecture on the use of the word grape on page 451 and the word doesn't even come up in the rest of the book, you're wasting your tuition dollars.

(P.S. Dear every English professor ever, this is especially annoying when you assign an entire novel and then decide to spend the entire class to talk about the importance of the grape as a symbol in the first five pages.)

(What is a grape? What is it really?)

But I've recently had a change of heart regarding that higher education hoodoo known as close reading. Let me tell you a little story:

I consider myself to be a sort of amateur A Song of Ice and Fire theorist. (I say amateur because you should see some of the ASOIAF discussion forums out there). Recently, I was doing some reading about an ASOIAF theory called The Great Northern Conspiracy. I know you don't like ASOIAF, so I'll spare you the details, but the gist is that people think that all of the great Northern houses are conspiring to make Jon Snow the Lord of the North. The primary evidence for this claim is a letter that Lyanna Mormont sends to Stannis Baratheon in A Dance with Dragons:

          "Bear Island knows no king but the King of the North, whose name is STARK."

You have no idea how this tiny phrase has been picked to pieces. I personally, have mulled it over many a time. The use of "whose" suggests that she's thinking of a specific person. She could have said something like "Bear Island only recognizes the Starks"or something like that, but instead she writes as if she has a specific person in mind. This is controversial because, at this time, most people think that all the Starks (minus Sansa and possibly Arya) are dead. So who is she referring to? This leads back to another theory that Jon Snow (the illegitimate child of Ned Stark) was legitimized by his half brother, Robb before Robb's untimely death.

And all of this is based off a handful of words.

What's weird about this to me is that I understand why people are analyzing this to death. It makes sense to me. Actually, I'm currently re-reading the ASOIAF with the sole intention of scouting evidence for some of my theories. That's not how I normally read books; if I'm reading something casually, my primary goal is to appreciate the work as a whole, not pick at little details while overlooking the overall plot and side stepping the pleasure of a well resolved work of fiction.

Were my English professors right? Is this really the best way to read a book? Should I start doing my casual reading with a pad of post-it notes on hand (which is what I'm doing with ASOIAF)? Could it be that I have finally found a way that close reading benefits me in real life? I mean, you can argue that being able to predict what's going to happen in a fantasy series is important but I know of 15 million billion nerds that would say differently. My concern then becomes that this sucks the fun out of reading. What I like about ASOIAF is that it's another world. I don't want to have to worry about the implications of a grape when I'm trying to get sucked into a fictional universe.

So, I offer you this question: what is reading? What is it really?

M.C.