“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” ― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

The first story I can remember hearing was the eternal story of the Crow and the Sparrow. The crow whose house was made of mud was left homeless one day after a heavy rain shower. So he went to his neighbour, the sparrow (whose house was sturdier and made of wax) and asked for shelter. But the wily sparrow kept making excuses after excuses and never let the crow in. The main characters of children’s stories are often animal or fictional creatures and the situations they find themselves in are often fanciful and bizarre. The Mad Hatter, the Wizard of Oz, Bluebeard and Hansel and Gretel , the Princess and the Pea , Aladdin and Peter Pan are just some of the “people” I was introduced to as a child and the subtle way in which values and principles were instilled in me through yarns that held me spell bound and often dumbstruck.  When the braveheart  rescues the damsel in distress, when the Boy stands on the burning deck, when Jack kills the giant and returns home with a sack of money, you can go to sleep peacefully dreaming of how hard work is always rewarded in the end and that fortune favours the brave. Values of chivalry, loyalty, friendship and honesty are reinforced again and again through situations that fascinate and captivate a young  and tender mind.

Unlike the chicken and egg situation where the question which came first, still remains unanswered, Art imitates life and stories, be they fictitious, magical or lyrical, peopled as they are by characters that are mythical, imaginary and altogether fantastical , are based on real life incidents or feelings or characters. If there is no direct reference to someone or something, there is definitely some inspiration from real life that is the basis of all stories.

In one’s life, one can always identify the evil step mother of the fairy tales of Grimm, spot the clever animals of Aesop, and recognise the princes and princesses that live happily ever after. Comic book characters like Archie and his gang at Riverdale bring to life the teenage angst of  American suburbia .  Comic book superheroes like  Superman and Batman serve to reinforce the concept that good always triumphs over evil and the tragic Austenian heroines  each us how far women have come from those repressive Ewardian days. Bertie Wooster, Jeeves and gang fossilize the life of  Upper Class Britons in pre and post World War I Britain in the delightful tales of PG Wodehouse. And the list goes on and on and on with lovable heroes like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the fiercely determined March sisters in Little Women and a whole host of “fictional” characters in all fiction (Oriental and Western)  who teach us how to deal with commonplace human emotions like greed, lust, anger, envy , love and forgiveness.

The amateur sleuthing of Miss Marple and the smart deductive logic of Sherlock Holmes sharpens the young intellect and instills a taste for analysis and problem solving already stirred by the adventures  of Fatty and the Five Findouters and other Blytonian heroes. Period romances and historical novels like ” A Tale of Two Cities”  and my all time favourite “Desiree” have taught me me more about the French Revolution and  Napoleonic France than any history lesson. Similarly the wide sweeping romance of “Gone With the Wind” more than cements the history of the American Revolution as does the sad story of Anna Karenina set in 19th Century Russia.

All great fictional characters have a faint resemblance to someone known to the author or at least have been inspired by people and  events and close to the author’s life. Very recently, I’ve been reading several Indian authors and am amazed at how much I’ve learnt about our ancient myths and legends through the fictional stories they’ve been set in ( Ashwin Sanghi and the Krishna Key for one).  How then can one deny the fact that stories and books about characters and events that are not real don’t teach us anything useful?

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda