Confessions: Is Augustine right to condemn story?

In Confessions, Augustine talks about theatre and story, and argues that they do more damage than good. His first argument against theatre in particular and story in general is that it is stupid to want to sympathize with a character. We are not invited to help, but only to enjoy the pain. We are inflicting ourselves with pain that is not our own, and Augustine argues that it is pointless[1]. Seeing someone else’s pain, however, prompts us to look at our own lives, and helps us to see what causes such pain. It helps us to see where we need to change.

A second argument Augustine gives against stories is that when you sympathize with the characters you love them, and the stories that he was exposed to taught you to love the immoral characters, and to feel badly when they got their just desserts. The problem, however, is not with the idea of story itself. The problem was with those particular stories. Story is a powerful tool that affects us deeply. It changes the way we think and feel about things, often without our consent or knowledge. Stories that teach bad things are pernicious because without our conscious consent we are changed for the worse. Good stories, however, are helpful, because they train our emotions in a good way, and help us to change in a way that we cannot consciously change. They are a way to communicate the truth to people who would not otherwise listen.

Augustine was right to argue against the theatre of his day, and the stories that were told then, because they were pagan and used as the mind control tools of demons. With the advent of Christian stories, however, story has been redeemed. We now have a wealth of Christian stories with which to combat the old pagan stories.

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[1] Augustine Confessions III.ii(2)