Stories teach by example, and by permitting us to safely participate in crises we hope to never get near. Quotidian life seldom offers opportunities for glorious heroism or grand agonies of defeat, but fictional entertainments offer those opportunities in abundance. Handbooks on fiction-writing persistently point out that at the climax of the plot the principal characters ought to be confronted with a choice that will be definitive, both in terms of the burgeoning chaos around them and in terms of their own psychologies. Often these are moments of personal reform and redemption, even of metamorphosis, as the hero goes against fate, against his or her upbringing, and becomes wholly different, new. Ethical grayness characterizes much of our human experience; and we change only incrementally, through a host of seemingly inconsequential decisions. The zest of good storytelling comes from its gross exaggeration of the frightening and mysterious process of change, so that we see heightened in THE ENGLISH PATIENT or SCHINDLER'S LIST the horrifying possibilities of wrong choices and the health to ourselves and others in choosing rightly.
from A STAY AGAINST CONFUSION by Ron Hansen
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