Value of Fiction: Hope

Artist Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal

An important role that fiction sometimes plays is to give people hope. I know many people who have particular books that they turn to when things feel down or overwhelming in their own lives. In many cases, it's the Harry Potter series.

Everyone has moments that seem dark to them individually-the death of a loved one, financial ruin, the loss of a friendship, medical depression, etc. For all these things, there are stories, fictional or not, that have people overcoming the same challenges-or symbolically similar ones. When executed well and with consideration paid to those suffering, this can be reassuring to an individual that is going through suffering, even if the story is wholly fictional.


Beyond individual suffering, there are times when the world seems dark. There are times when whole regions fall under a certain darkness and despondency. This could be a geographical area, a nation, or even a global issue. It could be a plague, a war, political turmoil, or an assortment of other things. It is in these times that the value of hope cannot be underestimated.

It's in these times that stories providing hope can be a blazing torch in the darkness. Just telling people that things will turn out alright can help to get them through the worst of times. This is revolutionary. This is incredibly important and valuable.

Risk: False Hope

If the hope provided isn't genuine, is it still worth something? 

In general, my thought is no. For instance, something that always frustrates me is when there is someone who is lonely and their friends try to reassure them by saying "you'll meet the right person," or "I'm sure there is someone out there for you," or any variation of the idea that this state won't be forever. Sure, it might not be forever, but the people providing the reassurance have no genuine reason to believe that. No religion that I'm aware of actually promises people romance. Christianity actually claims that being single is better. So, a single person, hearing that their plight will end, might place hope in this assurance, possibly to their own downfall. To begin with, it is encouraging. Over time, it becomes a voice in the back of their head reminding them of their own failure to live up to their friends expectations. It becomes a feeling that they are doing something wrong to still be in the position of being single. So, the false hope given by the friends actually can lead to some pretty dark places.

So, this is something to keep in mind when trying to give hope to people in a dark time through fiction. The hope needs to be reassuring, but it also needs to be true.

Or does it?

Is there value in telling people things will get better if there is no assurance that they will? I feel like giving people light in the dark may have some value. But if the creator of the light knows that it isn't genuine, they have to be careful about how its handled so that it doesn't become a greater source of darkness when extinguished. 

I am, admittedly, not sure how to manage this balance.

Side-Solution: Give a Way of Making Things Better

A lot of times, when the darkness closes in, people want to be able to do something. For some people, they want to get themselves out of the unfortunate circumstances. For others, they want to help others to be saved from the experience. But most people want to do something, whatever the motivation.

Fiction can provide a way of giving examples for people to follow. By setting people up in similar circumstances and showing how they get out of it, how they help others, or how they help to eliminate the circumstance altogether, we can provide not just hope, but a way forward as well.

The problem with this is that too often the examples provided by fiction are unattainable figures. We are unlikely to be an individual symbol of revolution like Katness Everdeen. We are unlikely to have the powers to singlehandedly fight evil like Superman. We are unlikely to have the resources to build a better future on our own. This was a part of the struggle that was encapsulated within Heroism and Other Lies. The fact that the hero myth set a terrible example for other people because it provided a solution to a problem, but that the solution was unattainable.

Of course, if we look at realistic way of fixing systemic problems, we see that if we can even find these methods, they generally are not cinematic in the way that good-selling fiction is. People would, instead of finding hope in these stories, find boredom in them.

Again, I don't know how to manage this balance.

Dystopia: A Balance?

Dystopia fiction is pretty big right now, by my understanding. At least it was a few years ago. I have some speculation as to why that is, but let's not get into that right now.

Dystopia fiction has a good way of playing into peoples fears and the darknesses that they face. Most of the societies presented in these works are ones that believably could come out of the circumstances in which they were written. So, in many cases, this might even increase ones feeling of hopelessness.

In some cases, the purpose of these books is to serve as a warning. A "don't go this way" to people to avert the darkness before it gets here.

Many of these stories end badly.

Some dystopia stories, however, end not with tragedy, but with the heroes (either as individuals or with the help of additional rebel force) overthrowing the evil that kept the world in a dystopic state. 

And these are the stories for the people who are the most hopeless. For the people who see no way out, it is incredibly important to have these stories that show other people overcoming such an overwhelmingly broken world.

(As a side note, I feel like what these stories often lack is talking about how to rebuild the world and stop it from becoming as bad or worse once you have defeated the dystopia, but that is neither here nor there, and it doesn't diminish the significance of these stories for those who can find hope within them.)

Ruins & Robots

Ruins & Robots is certainly not supposed to be a story of despair, but I'm not really sure that it's one of hope either. In truth, I'm hoping to avoid the despair element.

The story takes place in a world where humanity has met its end, which I could see being discouraging to some people. However, the story doesn't linger on that. It isn't about that. And, on the whole, the "death of humanity" proposed in Ruins and Robots isn't one that we'd realistically face in the future. It's one of the parts of the premise that is intentionally unrealistic in order to set up the premise of the story so that I can focus on the themes and elements that I actually want to focus on.

But, as I've been thinking about hope and hopelessness in the world lately, it has made me consider trying to switch to a more hopeful project. I just don't really know what that is right now. I think that Ruins and Robots has some pretty significant value to it that readers could find and take and apply, but I'm not sure that hope, in a realistic and helpful way, is among that value.

Conclusion

In the end, I think that hope is incredibly important. Especially now (and, historically, points like now.) But I don't know how to express it in a way that is genuine or gives people guidance on what to do.

I, myself, don't really know what to do. How do you tell people to hope that evil can be defeated when you can see that things are already in place for new evils to take its place once it is knocked down? When all the power to make change lies in competing conspiracies, how do you express hope for honest people? 

Perhaps I, myself, need to find some more hopeful things to read.