The Introduction to a paper...

... that I wrote for Pastor Wilson for my Rene Girard class. If you'd like to read the rest of it, comment or email me or something.

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Once upon a time, there lived a young boy who asked his father for a bedtime story. His father had never done this before, but was not unwilling to comply with his demand. He told his son to wait one day, and by the next evening he would have an excellent story for him. That night the father thought about the books which his mother had read to him as a child and the stories and novels which he had read over the years. He knew his son wouldn’t enjoy a Beatrix Potter story or understand a Shakespearean play or a Russian novel, but he knew that there were certain elements from both types of stories that he could incorporate into an impressive bedtime story. The next day after work he gave the story some more thought, and considered the various things which he could include. His son would want to know if anything exciting happens in the story, and so he would include all of the essentials, which, as the grandfather in The Princess Bride says, would include the following: “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.”[1] With these elements, the father felt sure he could tell the greatest bedtime story ever. Evening came and the son asked his father to fulfill his request. Granting him his wish, his father launched into a story which didn’t end for two hours, with the boy wide alert and tense upon his bed. After the “happily ever after” and a kiss and prayers, the son slipped underneath his covers and contentedly fell asleep, knowing all was well with the world. His father smiled and knew he’d have to repeat his performance, as every good story merits a re-telling and a copy of sorts.
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Being finite human beings with a love of story, we know what we like and we like what we know. However, we often fail to recognize what it is that we enjoy so much about our favorite stories. What makes them enjoyable? How do they capture our attention? Why are some authors more famous and popular than others, and why have some stories lasted for thousands of years? These are all questions that bear answering, and Rene Girard’s philosophy of mimesis, or imitation, provides the key which opens the door to the answers. His theory explains relationships on both an individual and communal level. Relationships function because a certain amount of imitative desire exists between two people which either brings them together or eventually pulls them apart. Great novels and plots contain relationships of this nature and also contain some form of violence or conflict which, in the end, must find resolution. It is this resolution, or conversion, which allows us as the audience to really appreciate the story and relate to it in some way or another. In fact, conversion is the key ingredient.

These elements of story are the reasons why we find ourselves fascinated by authors like Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, and Chesterton. They have been keen observes of life and human nature and recognize these patterns and characters in life, and realize that the best stories they write will be the ones which we can relate to because we know them. We know the characters and we know their problems. Shakespeare understood this, and became a master at the art. He understood how relationships functioned, and infused his plays with quirky and odd relationships which, when truly considered, were not really very different from what happened in real life.

My hope is that by understanding what Shakespeare accomplished in his plays and also briefly looking at other literature throughout history, we might come to a better understanding of why it is that the story of Christianity is so great and so glorious. The story of the Gospel does not really differ from any of the great novels, and yet so many of us reject the story of Christianity while singing praises of Shakespeare and other great secular authors. This is a great inconsistency, and one which should not exist. In reality, we are all like the son in the beginning story. We like our stories, and we like them to be a certain way, with certain elements and certain plotlines.


[1] William Goldman, The Princess Bride, (New York City, NY: Random House, 1973), 8.