Moral of the Story
As a young child reared on Aesop’s fables casted with animals possessing humanlike characteristics in very human situations, I grew accustomed to seeking the moral of every story. I have always rationalized that if there is no moral, there really is no story.
For the most part, I still think this is true. If a story has no premise from which a lesson can be learned, then the “story” could be considered a rendition of an occurrence or happening.
This is likely another reason I am such a fan of the writing genre, creative nonfiction. Creative nonfiction allows the author certain artistic liberties in relating ‘based on true story’ events.
But perhaps the most important element of creative nonfiction is that in most cases, particularly in personal and radio essays, the stories impart a clearly defined moral. The story carries an important life lesson that readers can easily have and hold.
And if you really think about it, stories are the most effective vehicles that can be used to deliver morals. It is very difficult to prescribe morals without the buoyancy of a descriptive plot or scene to set the stage for its relevancy.
But even with this being said, the stories used to deliver morals are often for naught simply because, if these written or verbal tales where enough, then we would cease to have stories to tell that convey these morals.
In short, morals are not something you simply learn and then live by. Morals are the learnings that result from living. This lends to the old adage that experience is life’s greatest teacher.
So as life lends the greatest gifts to writers and as we joyfully read their tales, we are also getting a clear glimpse of their moral code as designed by life itself.
