Stories are the things we live for. They enhance the ordinary drabness that our lives would otherwise become.\u00a0 They shape lives and change people for better or for worse. They can bring hope to people who have none. They provide relatable figures for people who have none, and friends to the friendless. Stories bring hope to those who don\u2019t have any. \u00a0In Life, Animated,<\/em> Ron Suskind describes how stories did all those things for his son, Owen, a boy with autism. Throughout his life, Owen connected to Disney movies, finding solace in the stories they told, the characters they created, and the joy they brought to him. What he found in Disney movies shows the power of stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Life, Animated<\/em> readers can easily see how Disney\u2019s stories exerted a very strong influence on Owen. \u00a0Ron Suskind tells the story of his son Walt\u2019s ninth birthday. Walt, every birthday, would cry at some point during the day. Ron and his wife could never quite figure out why. But on Walt\u2019s ninth birthday, Owen walked over to them and spoke a complex sentence for the first time ever; \u201cWalter doesn\u2019t want to grow up\u2026 like Mowgli or Peter Pan.\u201d \u00a0(page 53). Owen, a six-year-old boy with autism who hasn\u2019t spoken a fully complex sentence at all up until that point, astounds his parents with not only a complex sentence but also a very insightful observation about his brother. How? Using stories. He references Disney movies like The Jungle Book<\/em> and Peter Pan<\/em> to explain how his brother is feeling. Clearly, stories have had a significant effect on Owen\u2019s life up Stories help us interpret the world around us. Just like Owen\u2019s astute observation of his brother, we can make observations about the world and interpret our observations using stories. This is one of the many reasons why stories are so powerful! I can better comprehend experiences I could never have on my own, just by hearing other\u2019s stories. By reading Life, Animated<\/em>\u00b8 I have a slightly better understanding of what it is like to have a child with autism. Even though I have never experienced having a child with autism, through Ron Suskind\u2019s eyes I can understand how he felt raising a child with autism, and I can see the difficulties he faced. From other Readers often find solace in stories. Like Owen Suskind found solace in the Disney stories he loved, viewing the characters almost as if they were family. He found in those characters people he could relate to. I have often found solace in characters’ stories. Often when reading books I find myself relating to and finding solace in the characters in the novel. Sometimes they become as much like family as my own family. C.S. Lewis\u2019s \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Stories provide characters to relate to. Like Owen relates to the characters in Disney, you and I can find our own characters to relate to. Owen related to the sidekicks in Disney movies. In a family play rendition of the movie James and the Giant Peach, <\/em>Owen casts himself as the Earthworm. His family tried to cast him as the hero of the story, but he cast himself as the sidekickiest of sidekicks. He addresses his family for the first time and says \u201cThe Earthworm\u2026is scared sometimes and confused. And he\u2019s jerlous\u2026Jelerous\u2026 He\u2019s jealous of the Grasshopper and the Centipede and characters who can do things he can\u2019t. And that\u2019s why I\u2019m the Earthworm.\u201d <\/em>Owen sees himself in the Earthworm from James and the Giant Peach<\/em>. He knows that he isn\u2019t capable of doing everything others are able to do, and he\u2019s jealous of the fact that he isn\u2019t capable of doing everything others can. But because he sees himself in the earthworm he finds himself able to better express himself. In this scene, he is able to give insight into how he sees himself. He can show people bits of himself that he otherwise would not have been able to reveal had it not been for stories. Relatable characters allowed Owen to demonstrate who he is, as it allows us to understand who we are. When we see characters we relate to, they often enable us to understand ourselves and better explain who we are to others. The ability to relate to fictional characters enables us to understand people we don\u2019t understand and be better equipped to empathize better with other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stories are powerful. They help us relate to the world, understand people, and even understand ourselves. Stories helped Owen, a boy with autism, cope with a large and scary world that he couldn\u2019t understand. The characters of Disney\u2019s great animated classics became his friends. The world in which he lived and the lens through which he saw everything was colored with stories. Stories have helped Owen through life. This is the power of stories. They bring joy and hope to people when they struggle to find it elsewhere. Stories are one of the greatest things in Amanda Platz Stories are the things we live for. They enhance the ordinary drabness that our lives would otherwise become.\u00a0 They shape lives and change people for better or for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":4210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[341,340],"tags":[102],"class_list":["post-4198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-language-studies","category-literary-studies","tag-best-of-language","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4198"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4211,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4198\/revisions\/4211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}