Stories Never Die: The Unending Power of the Written Word

The older I get and the more books I read, the more I am struck by how there are so many less actual storylines than I thought when I was younger. And I don’t mean this to be a cynical thought: there’s actually beauty in realizing that as Solomon says “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Authors show the influence of stories they’ve read; themes get repeated. So why does this matter, both for us as adult readers, and for our children, as we consider what books to introduce them to? Does it actually matter if our kids read the classics? Does it matter if we immerse ourselves in what has come before? Our modern culture increasingly sees these things as unimportant. Clearly in a day and age where we have technology at our fingertips for our answers and where we have been “enlightened” into seeing that old ways of thinking are wrong, we don’t need to consider the authors of old or the influences that shaped our histories, right? I would argue that this thought is very, very WRONG. Let’s consider why we might want to show our children the great literary works of the past.

1. All stories repeat themselves. I find it interesting that some of the greatest literature of the twenty-first century is actually inspired by classic works. Remember the Twilight saga? I read and loved it like my peers, but refused to read the other “vampire” fiction that became popular after it, most of which we now don’t even remember the names of. What sets Twilight apart from the others? I would argue it is the inspiration Stephanie Meyer took from the classics (specifically Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream). We saw the same thing happen with the Percy Jackson series when Rick Riordan built off the legends of Greek mythology. While there are certainly popular works of fiction today that aren’t based on older stories, I would argue that in any work of substance you will see threads of various stories that inspired the author if you are willing to dig deep enough to see them.

2. Seeing common story arcs and themes inspires us to look at the “bigger story.” You will hear me say many times here that all good books point us back to real TRUTH and BEAUTY; in other words they point us to God’s Word. This is true even of authors who aren’t writing from a Christian perspective. Why? Because there can be no real truth and beauty without God. The very gift that authors are employing in their writing comes from God, so it makes sense that the use of that gift would point to Him. When our children read enough books where they can recognize repeated storylines, they will begin to see the bigger, grander connection between all stories. As Father Cassidy comments in Emily of New Moon when she shares the plot for her “epic” she’s writing “‘One av of the seven original plots in the world.’” There truly is nothing “new” under the Sun, despite what our fast-paced, “always learning” culture thinks. We tend to live in a time where it is assumed that what we experience today hasn’t been experienced before, but if we look at the annals of history we see that simply isn’t true. Story transcends time and place.

3. Filling our children’s minds with the classics will produce “classic” writing from them. In this case, I am using the term “classic” to speak of that writing that stands the test of time. There is a reason that today’s high schoolers are still studying the same literature I did in school (authors like Shakespeare and Dickens and poets like Tennyson and Dickinson): not only did these authors write in a way that transcended the time they lived in, but the language they used formed the building blocks of our modern language. The more our children hear and read the classics, the more their writing and thoughts will be shaped in the way of goodness, truth, and beauty. As Andrew Pudewa (founder of the Institute for Excellence In Writing) has been famously quoted with saying: “You can’t get out what you don’t put in.” Perhaps if our children are struggling with writing we should go back to the drawing board and consider what “input” they are receiving: are we reading aloud the classics to them? Are they being exposed to the deeper works that have stood the test of time? Or are they spending all of their exposure to books on the latest Diary of a Wimpy Kid novel?

Obviously we want to balance reading the classics with some light books, too; after all we read for love, and that includes the love of books themselves. But let’s not assume that all books are equal just because they are books. Let’s give our children the gift of seeing the same stories repeated in different forms, of seeing the greater storyline of mankind that the Holy Spirit brought forth in Scripture, and of being prepared for writing and sharing their own thoughts.