雅思课外读物--Why we care so much about fictional characters

今天带给大家的雅思课外阅读文章题目叫“Why we care so much about TV and movie characters”，为什么我们对电视电影角色那么入迷？关于这个问题，我的理由简单粗暴：因为他们长得帅！本文作者的观点是我们为什么会对虚构人物的命运如此关心，为之哭泣，为之欢喜，为之呐喊，为之愤怒?一方面是因为我们投入了情感，另一方面是我们希望人物得到公正，就像在现实中一样。我们能够将理智和情感投入到虚构世界中，表明我们的认知能力是完整(intact)的。一起来看看这篇精彩的文章吧！

Ever cry over the death of a TV character? Here's why.

I admit it: I'm the sort of "Star Wars" geek(对......痴迷的人，傻子) who's intrigued(被……吸引住) by the suggestion sweeping the Internet that Jar Jar Binks might have been the secret bad guy. The theory began in a complicated Reddit post, and has since gone mainstream.

Why am I so intrigued? Why are fans of "Game of Thrones" so angry at the thought that Jon Snow might actually be dead? Why are fans of "The Walking Dead" beside themselves(疯狂的) over the apparent demise(死亡) two episodes back of Beloved Character Whom We Won't Spoil Things by Naming?(为什么《行尸走肉》的粉丝们会因为那些他们钟爱却被写死的角色那么疯狂--为防剧透，在这我们不说出这些角色的名字?) None of these people exist. Why, then, do we become so emotionally engaged in their fates?

To help answer the question, I went to Blakey Vermeule of Stanford University, a professor of English and author of the excellent monograph(专著) "Why Do We Care About Literary Characters?" There Vermeule combines cognitive theory, history, social psychology and a touch of Darwin to suggest that without fiction, we would have trouble making sense of the world. Narratives bring order to what we see around us, and characters put faces to what we learn.

To be sure, the stories Vermeule has in mind are mostly classic literature. Still, she was kind enough, via e-mail, to answer a few questions, and she provides a truly intriguing theory:

"I think this widespread fascination with fantasy shows that we do not in fact live in a secular(世俗的) age, rather we live rather amazingly in an age of shimmering(闪烁的) enchantments(迷幻), of heroes and villains(反派角色) and Gods and monsters."

She's noticed, in other words, that fandom's(影迷) deepest engagement seems to be with characters facing zombies and Sith Lords. She adds: "That these worlds are fictional and that we know them to be fictional is quite beside the point(无关紧要): the human brain is extremely easily fooled into believing things are true, often viscerally(发自内心地), even when we know in some rational sense that they are not."

Lest one think that she is here speaking only of the effect of fiction on our brains, Vermeule provides an example that should leave us uneasy: "A friend reports that he recently toured a virtual reality lab(虚拟现实实验室) at Stanford. The simulator(模拟器) made him think he was standing on a plank (木板)over a ravine(峡谷) -- nothing he could say to himself could convince him to step off the plank, even though he knew perfectly well he was standing on carpet in a lab."

Why does it matter what clever cognitive scientists can fool our brain into thinking? Because scientists are not the only ones who can do it: "Fiction makers have gotten astonishingly good at defeating our rational override switch(人控开关)."

They can pull this off, says Vermeule, because their creations "prime some deep religious intuitions and give them a habitation in a world that has grown so deeply skeptical and materialistic and wary of ideals(Vermeule说，他们能够拉下我们的理性控制开关，因为他们的创造 “可以激起深藏内心的某些宗教直觉，并帮它们在这个世界中找到栖息地，这个世界如今已变得如此不可知、如此物质化、如此不相信理想。")

In her book, Vermeule contends that even stories we know to be invented help fulfill a need for narrative connection that may be wired into us(在她的书中，Vemeule认为，即使我们知道那些故事是虚构的，但那些故事仍然满足了根植于我们内心对叙事联系的需求。). We can understand the world better when we can embed(嵌入) its various characteristics in a tale. But the tale, to work, has to offer personification. This was true in the days of ancient myth and is true now. It may be that our identification with the characters leads us to believe we're on the track of important truths.(也许是这样的：与人物认同让我们相信，我们正通往重要真理的路上。)

So in our encounters with fiction, we're nevertheless searchers. We spend emotional energy on characters because we can pursue these deep truths even if they're absent from our reality. This, says Vermeule, is a good thing: "We should absolutely delight in the power that fiction makers (in any medium) have to transport us into other worlds and involve us so mightily."

We should. The problem is, too often we don't absolutely delight. Instead, we absolutely lose our tempers. "Game of Thrones" fans are angry at the thought that Jon Snow might be dead, and desperate for evidence that he isn't. "Walking Dead" fans feel the same way about Beloved Character. And "Star Wars" fans -- well, that's an often eccentric(古怪的) group that cares so intensely that every line of dialogue is worth parsing(剖析) to get the answer.