Why do we keep reading painful books?

There must have been a time in your life when you felt utterly and completely broken because of a story; when your heart was wrenched from the inside, ripped to pieces, burned in the iciest flame, and returned to your hands to mend. Yet, although the process left a permanent emotional scar, you proceeded to pick up the next novel, being every bit as heart-breaking as the last. But why? Why do we decide to put ourselves through these novels when we are fully aware of the emotional consequences they have and the attachments we will create with them?

Here are 4 reasons why we enjoy reading painful books:

Catharsis

One of the most significant and relevant motives is catharsis. Since the era of Greek tragedies, the idea of purification and purgation of strong and repressed emotions through tragic theatre has been prevalent. This is the idea of realizing your own negative emotions, unburying them, and therefore releasing them. Catharsis also refers to a feeling of rebirth and relief from our own fears and anger. This being because tragedies aid us in understanding that life can always become more gruesome and painful, therefore distracting us from our own problems. This rings very true for painful novels. We immerse ourselves in the story-building and the flow of words, painting a picture of a foreign story, different to our own; in turn, this helps us forget our frivolous plights and focus on another person suffering through their own journey.

The Thrill of the Chase

However, catharsis isn’t the only reason we might enjoy reading painful novels. Humans live the majority of their lives in routine: waking up, eating breakfast, going to work/school, coming home, etc. True thrill is reserved for special moments in life. This rarity of occurrence is what provides these moments with their allure and importance. Well-written novels, aid us in escaping the monotony of the everyday, allowing us to explore new worlds, meet new characters, and think more deeply about the world around us. For this reason, we enjoy painful books as they provide us with excitement and a break in our monotonous cycle. Suddenly, we manage to create these special moments artificially, by following another character’s journey and allowing us to feel the emotions they feel in their adventures.

Human beings live to feel

Moreover, homo sapiens simply need to feel emotions in order to have a will to do things and maintain clarity of mind. Being aware of our emotions can help us talk about feelings more clearly, avoid or resolve conflicts better, and move past difficult feelings more easily. Feeling pain reminds us that we are living beings, prone to environmental factors and able to interact with our surroundings. After a heavy workout your muscles may feel sore, yet you feel better and more energized, possessing a better clarity of mind than before. Tragic and heart-breaking novels remind us of how powerful our emotions can be, therefore clearing our mind and leaving us more energized than before. Not to mention, that pain is an integral part of life: something all humans go through, something that we all have in common. Without pain, there would be no happiness either as the only reason we feel joy so strongly is because there is another emotion that we can compare it to. Without emotions, our lives would be empty and filled with monotony. We couldn’t imagine our lives without joy, which means that we cannot imagine our lives without some element of pain either.

Memorability

Lastly, tragic books remain with us. If you read a novel about a joyful family having a picnic, you wouldn’t remember it for long because there isn’t any element of shock, excitement, anagnorisis etc. It is a perfect scene which doesn’t strike you as memorable. To some extent, we wish our novels to reflect reality, a world in which nothing ever seems to go right. If this is reflected in the novels we read, we can resonate more deeply with the story, therefore allowing us to feel more intense emotions while reading and making the story more memorable for us. We become emotionally invested and ponder about ways in which conditions could have been changed from resulting in tragedy. What is the interest in a happy ending that doesn’t inspire us to think further about it?

In conclusion, we love painful and tragic books because it reminds us of reality, yet also shows us why monotony is sometimes better than a life of impulsive actions. They create a memorable place for us to return to in order to feel emotions that make us feel a clarity of the mind. Lastly, they purify us of our negative emotions by unburying them and allowing us to express them, even subconsciously, along with the feelings evoked by the novel itself.