The Storytelling Animal By Jonathan Gottschall

Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal is a novel full of controversy, fact, anecdotes, and personal experiences of Gottschall himself and his daughters. Throughout the entire story, readers are enlightened and perceive things differently with a new perspective on how fiction and stories really shape our lives and behavior. What Gottschall is constantly trying to tell us is to always read and watch fiction whether it is reading a book, watching a movie, or listening to a song. As we read the first couple of pages, we start to doubt the author; however, as we read more, we soon start to doubt ourselves and wonder if reality and truth are really what they are in our lives and past. With so much uncertainty as to what we believe, we also start to question whether or not fiction prepares us for the real world and our personal struggles.
As a result, according to Gottschall, we are following the “problem simulation theory” (63) where our brains are rewired and store up information based on fiction that will “prepare us and act as solutions for future obstacles.” (64) As well, he mentioned that we are in a “continuous immersion in fiction problem solving,” (63) which is what he uses to support his theory on problem simulation. Through fiction, we learn of a character’s obstacles and how they overcome them and apply that to our lives to remedy similar issues. With this, we then let different types of fiction play a role in our everyday lives since every day comes with a new struggle and