During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of your reading of Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, “The Riddle of Fiction.” Some questions that you might consider answering in your response: What does Gottschall mean by the “riddle of fiction?” Play is the work of who? What does children’s play differentiation tell us about the speed of evolutionary change and the speed of cultural change? Remember to type up your handwritten summary and post it here as a comment to this blog post.
ENG1101 D371 English Composition I, SPR2015
Official site for ENG1101 D371
While reading the “Riddle of Fiction”, Jonathan explains in this chapter how our hands are use for many things such as eating, making fists, tickling, writing, and basically give people a clue of what we’re talking about by simply giving them hand gestures or signs without having the need to say anything. Our hands are our tools but as for our hands that can do many things our other body parts can do many things as well. Like for instance Gottschall mention our eyes, not only does it help us see but it also depicts our every emotion. Our lips, use to speak of course but also to express our affection through kissing or when we smile or frown. Jonathan also say how children can catch on to hand signs and gestures they see more than learning how to actually talk. Like say for instance, if a baby would want his or her bottle they would cry but at the same time they would be pointing to the bottle for you to give it to them only because they have saw someone or saw you point to something you want. Children’s play differentiation tells us about the speed of evolutionary change and the speed of cultural change because sex differences in children’s play reflect the fact biological evolution is slow, while cultural evolution is fast. Evolution hasn’t caught up with the rapid changes in men’s and women’s lives that have occurred mainly in the past one hundred years.
In the beginning of the story “Riddle of Fiction” they talked about hand gestures. Hand gestures are different ways to express and speak without any words. Just by looking at someone’s hand gesture one would know what it means. They explain how children commonly use hand gestures when they are too young to express themselves. Their brain picks up on hand gestures faster than words. Further, into the story they talked about pretend play is serious deadly fun which means children often get stuck in a reality world. The sex differences in children’s play eventually prepares each child for the different challenges of adulthood. For example, young girls are given dolls and are shown how to be nurturing while boys are given trucks and different cars and are shown to be more aggressive.
In Jonathan Gottschall, “ The Story Telling Animal, The Riddle of Fiction,” Gottschall focuses on the behavior of young children and its relation to story. As he walks through his daughter’s daycare, he describes his surroundings as unsettling. From cops and robbers to a tea party, every child around him is involved in pretend play. Children play pretend naturally. Why does a child’s imagination run wild? To answer that, we need to figure out the pleasure of story. Gottschall gives us many examples as to why story exists. He uses the short story, “Invaders” by John Kessel, where Kessel describes fiction as cocaine. It is a drug we use to escape one’s own reality. Some evolutionary thinkers believe story is biological because it is universal. If not, we would have gotten rid of it centuries ago. To further figure out fiction, clues are given within a child’s wild imagination. Our desire for story begins at a young age. Gottschall mentions an experiment in the psychology of gender conducted by a teacher named Vivian Paley. Paley, born in 1929, needed the boys to behave in order to make her class work better. In her classroom, boys gathered by the blocks and made lots of commotion, while the girls were princesses at the ball. As society changed from women into the workforce and men becoming stay-at-home Dads, gender roles solidified in the classroom. Paley tried to switch things up. She would have the boys go to the tea party and the boys ended up making it into a battlefield. All she wanted was for the children to act in a unisex way. Paley gave up her experiment because of the deep structures of gender. Children’s play is no accident. Child psychologists agree “pretend play is for something.” It biologically has a purpose. Play is the work of children and it is preparing the child mentally for adulthood. Children’s play differentiation shows us that biological evolution is slow and cultural evolution is fast.
In the riddle of fiction, Gottschall talks about how a child’s pretend play is serious in their brain’s development. Children pick up hand gestures easily because the brain picks up hand gestures faster than words. Hand gestures are simply another way to communicate without using words. Instead, it uses motion and symbols. When children pretend play, I believe they are using symbiotic reasoning to further understand the world, and this is why it is so important. However, psychologists still understand that it is important to a child’s development. Playing is basically how children work and prepare themselves for the responsibilities of being an adult.
Reading Jonathan Gottschall’s “The Storytelling Animal,The Riddle Of Fiction”. I kind of felt like he was forcing this idea of fiction. I don’t think it came off as easily as thr chapter “The Witchery Of Story”. Maybe I’m bias because my presentation was on “The Witchery Of Story”. I did relate to evidence with the toddler’s imagination and it being somewhat morbid and scattered,but very creative, due to just a sense of instinct.
As I was reading the chapter “The Riddle of Fiction” I noticed Gottschall went over several ideas almost as if he was trying to confuse the reader. I believe the title refers to the idea of why we tell fictional stories in the first place. Maybe it is biological or if it is to bring people together or even to get the girl you like. Gottshall refers to a picture from the previous chapter where it is shown that a women is very interested in the story the man is telling. This shows the idea of how people tell stories for even simple reasons like affection. Another point Gottschall pointed out was about the place of children. Play is the work of our own minds. He goes into depth about the differentiation about how girls and boys play. A kindergarten teacher once held an experiment where she tried to encourage boys and girls to play with each other instead of each sex on separate sides. Of course the experiment led to failure. Boys loved playing rough,wrestling and playing with imaginary guns while girls would go into their own fantasy world of being princesses or being parents. When you meshed them together the boys would usually take the girls dolls captive as hostages which the girls did not like. Gottschall gives us a lot of information that really makes the person stop and think about what they just finished reading constantly.
According to “ The Riddle of Fiction” by Jonathan Gottschall, we have the ability to communicate without spoken words. In this chapter, he stated that people are able to communicate with their senses. We are able to use our hands to communicate, which is most likely our universal tool. We also can use our eyes to describe our feelings. He also stated that children use hand gestures better than speaking. The different kind of games young boys and young girls play has a major effect on the speed of the human evolution.
Gottschall’s reading is not as straight forward as Medina’s reading. Gottschall’s reading is to complex, while Medina’s reading is more simple and easy to understand.
In the chapter “The Riddle Of Story” by Jonathan Gottschall, he talks about the riddle of fiction which is the way people tells stories by expressing themselves and communicating through hand gestures and facial expressions. He mentions the functions for different parts of our faces. For example, he writes about the different purposes for our lips. We use them to kiss, to smile, laugh and more. We let others know our emotions through our lips and hands. Gottschall also writes about how children’s play is mostly fictional. Children has their own world for pretend play, and usually involves their mother and father to pretend play with them. Gottschall mentions that children’s play are short and choppy stories. It helps children train their bodies for challenges of adulthood and build social and emotional intelligence. Gottschall mentions that children’s genders reflects on the speed of biological and cultural evolution. Biological evolution is slow while cultural evolution is fast.
The Chapter Riddle of fiction is a very complex chapter which Gotshall showed many examples of fictional stories. I believe the point he is trying to convey is that there are many types of fictional stories and so many ways of telling them, but after reading these stories, how come they can be related to a Nonfiction story one way or another. When Gottshall mentions the “Play”, I believe he’s referring to the writers, how they play with readers mind and make them wonder what stories are real. Children’s play tell us how fast the pace of evolution of human kind by showing us intelligence that were known by the last generation, later on in their life. Cultural change is very fast due to the birth of the internet. Everyone is in the internet now, news that is interesting at that moment, can be old story in one or two days.
JG starts to chapter by talking about robust security at what sounds like a prison. Could immediately decipher that this is just to show how humans might communicate in total isolation. Our minds are certain ways of “doing things”. We hide certain things from certain people. That is our “security”. JG also talks about the recordings aspects of our brain. We humans remember things that we see, smell, hear, touch, and taste. Certain things are recorded from each and every day. A child’s mind is unique, it simulates and derives things differently than a adult. Children are just the beginning of more to come. Children are learning and communicating not by speech but by hand signals and faces. At an early age we are imaging things that even an adult might not think of. A child’s mind and an adults mind are 2 versions of a similar thing. We think, we create, we record, but do it so differently that one probably will not understand the other. Children are improv performers.
In The Riddle of Fiction, Jonathan Gottschall implies that evolution plays a big part in how children’s play is played. Children naturally have the imagination of how they thing based on their sex. Males tend to be more vigorous, and females tend to be more affectionate. Even though Gottschall differs the personality of both sexes, he concluded that both female and male have connection in how they create plays. He realized that even though males may tend to be more aggressive than females, both sexes have a different form of troubles in their play. In other words, there will have a conflict in their imagination; thinking that there is always a good and bad side. The speed of the evolutionary changes slowly, and cultural changes quickly due to the fact that technology has involved rapidly. Evolution changes slowly because, both female and male has this tendency to differentiate their role, where boys will “hunt” and females will “serve”. Evolution still carries the same mindset that was set hundred years ago, therefore there isn’t hardly any changes at all.
In Jonathan Gottschall, “ The Story Telling Animal, The Riddle of Fiction,” Gottschall focuses on the hand gestures we use such as to eat, talk, or even wave and at someone and the behavior of children and the games they play how it contributes to their brain. Hand gestures make us understand better but its just another way to how we communicate with others. Al though he did show many ideas it kind of confused me to what was his point of view? His reading is much more complex to understand and it makes us think about many things and solutions that can be. It makes us think outside the box. Also he talked allot about how children playing around can help them grow and learn a lot more.
Reading Jonathan Gottschall’s The Story Telling Animal chapter on The Riddle of Fiction he talks about how children play. Specifically he describes how children don’t speak as much but use hand gestures to express themselves when they’re having fun. My youngest sister is two years old and I see how she plays with other little kids and they really do interact with each other using hand gestures. They also use their facial expression to show how they’re feeling. Something I also picked up while reading this chapter.