Posts Tagged With: destiny

Why do Young Readers Turn to Fantasy?

The fantasy genre has exploded in popularity over the past twenty years. From the big screen adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia, to endless new novels often directed to teens and young adults. Fantasy has always appealed to younger readers as escapism, but is this the only reason, or is there something more for the current generation?

Rebecca LuElla Miller writes of deeper reasons in The Appeal Of Fantasy For Young Adults, in that these readers have been:

…expected to do little more than have a good time and do their homework, [now they] long for significance. They want to do something that matters, that has eternal purpose…long for a life that matters, and they find in fantasy a world that needs someone who will step up and do just that.

Then too, fantasy helps young people organize the world. There is moral right and wrong, and the characters in fantasy must align themselves with one or the other. There’s also history that makes a difference in the here and now, prophesy that tells about the future, and decisions that make or break a destiny.

So I suspect that these, and the other reasons that LuElla details, are not all that different for all age groups. Finding your true purpose, your place in the Story, is the desire that burns in all people.

Younger readers just haven’t given up on that quest. They haven’t allowed societal forces to tell them where to go or what to do. Yes, one could also argue that flawed materialistic and relativistic beliefs have replaced solid and logical worldviews.

Perhaps a good dose of fantasy is, ironically, needed to show us reality.

Categories: Books, fantasy, Fiction | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Who are We Really?

That is often the question of theologians and philosophers. But it was also what the ordinary folk used to ask and could readily answer. Now, locked up in reality television and other alternate realities, people ignore this important question until it’s too late. Is it any wonder that our novels are so often about people searching for who they really are? Trying to become what they were meant to be?

John Eldredge writes in The Journey of Desire:

We all share the same dilemma — we long for life and we’re not sure where to find it…Our days come to us as a riddle and the answers aren’t handed out with our birth certificates. We must journey to find the life we prize. And the guide we have been given is the desire set deep within, the desire we often overlook or mistake for something else or even choose to ignore.

The greatest human tradegy is simply to give up the search. There is nothing of greater importance than the life of our deep heart. To lose heart is to lose everything…

The clue to who we really are and why we are here comes to us through our heart’s desire.

Categories: Books, Fiction, Writing | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

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