Do Stories Teach Us Our Morals?
When we read stories or watch movies, we understand what is going on by processing the information that is given to us.
Sometimes, however, parts of that information are misleading or vague and require us to rethink our previously held beliefs about characters and about events.
Sometimes narrators turn out to be unreliable and, as viewers, we may wonder how we were are so easily fooled — and further — why we enjoy it.
Narrative ethics explores morality, or lack thereof, in the context of a story. For the narartive ethicist, moral values are inherent to stories and storytelling because, according to James Phelan:
Narratives themselves implicitly or explicitly ask the question:
How should one think, judge, and act — as author, narrator, character, or audience — for the greater good?
Ethical storytelling, on the other hand, refers to the act of storytelling. The idea that authors write, or that narrators narrate, with good or not-so-good intentions depending on how much or how little the storyteller wishes to deceive their audience.
To summarize:
1) narrative ethics investigates the story itself and the morals or lack of morals that it contains…
