"Adolescence," "James," Holy Week, and the Power of Story

I

Like most people, I like a good story. So does my daughter. One day she told me I should watch the Netflix mini-series, “Adolescence.” She thought I would appreciate its craftsmanship, though she warned me it was dark. I asked, “Why would I want to watch a dark show?”, but respecting her taste for quality productions, I dipped my toes into the program’s turbulent waters until they nearly drowned me.

“Adolescence” is the story of a 13-year-old boy in the U.K. who is accused of brutally murdering a female classmate. At the beginning of the first episode, we don’t know why the police seem convinced of the boy’s guilt. By the end of that episode and throughout all four episodes the plot and the characters reveal themselves.

Of course, such bit-by-bit revelation is true of most stories. What makes “Adolescence” different is its intensity. And what makes it intense are all the elements of its great craftsmanship: the brilliant writing and directing, the powerful acting, and most of all, the way the camera draws you into every episode up close and in real time. The technique of shooting each episode in one continuous take makes us feel like on-the-scene witnesses to the unmerciful drama that exacts its heavy toll on all the leading characters. As if watching the proverbial car wreck, we can’t take our eyes off them as they become victims of the vague, incomprehensible evil that lurks below the surface.

The show has received well-deserved critical acclaim. And it would be hard to watch it without recognizing its social relevance, focused on a young, largely online culture practically invisible to us of less tender years.

My biggest take-away, though, was not the production’s substantive relevance, but rather the impact of its immersive storytelling. It brought me inside the suffering of a family, an experience that had special poignancy for me because of the rare occasions when my legal practice brought me in contact with people who, in the privacy of their homes and closest relationships, endured similar pain. In those handful of cases, that good people who had not asked for tragedy to strike them were in agony was clear, but I witnessed it only in the sterile confines of high rise conference rooms and busy courthouses. “Adolescence,” and especially the final episode, brought me inside a fictional yet familiar family’s home and projected imagined snippets of their daily traumas. It made me feel their private pain in gut-wrenching ways, and in doing so, reaffirmed for me the unique power of well-told stories to generate empathy and understanding.

II

Generating empathy and understanding is an aim, or at least an outcome, of all good dramatic accounts, whether fiction or nonfiction. Good stories not only instruct; they also allow us to feel what others feel. Putting a human face on a fraught situation makes it real in a way that reasoned discourse alone does not. In doing so, it also has the power to foster compassion.

Journalists, trial lawyers, and politicians understand the power of a well-told story. Good journalism not only reports the news, but often brings the news to life through concrete examples of how the events of our times cause harm to specific people, families, and communities –- the farmer who can’t sell his produce, the law-abiding migrant disappeared into a prison, the child who succumbs to measles. They also use stories to share the good news – the woman who donates a kidney to a stranger, the community that rallies around an elderly couple displaced from their burned down home, the family reunited with a lost pet. Data, charts, and graphs are needed to give anecdotal events context, but the human-interest story remains one of the most powerful ways to make us sensitive to each other’s triumphs and tribulations.

The most vivid memory I have from a trial skills course I took early in my career was watching an experienced trial lawyer demonstrate a mock opening statement in a hypothetical accident case. She wasted no time on the usual preliminaries, like introducing herself and her client and explaining what the trial would be like and what the jurors would have to decide. Instead, from her very first words, she launched into the action. She put us at the scene of the accident at the time when it happened, helping us to see the people, the surroundings and the events as they unfolded. That technique may not work for every lawyer or every case, but it worked for her. And it worked because she wasn’t lecturing or talking down to anyone. She was telling a story that grabbed our attention and held it until she was done.

Politicians also understand the power of storytelling. They tell us stories in their speeches and their ads. Who hasn’t seen a President introduce their invitees at a State of the Union address? They often do so to tell stories of their guests’ experiences that will drive home a position the President supports or opposes. They know it’s one thing to explain a policy and its rationale, but it’s more powerful by far to personify it.

And yet, sometimes politicians prefer abstraction. They may do so, for example, to vilify a large group of stereotyped people. In the 1950s and 1960s, the villians were “communists” (both real and imagined). After 9/11, it could easily have become Muslims, though President Bush, to his credit, attempted with some success to limit the focus to the tiny, radical element that operate as violent extremists.

Today it is migrants. They have been the scapegoats-of-choice for at least ten years, and that scapegoating has led to new extremes of suffering today. “They are eating our pets” works as a rallying cry when no one demands that the general “they” become more specific. It falters when the person making the false claim is challenged to give examples and name names, and falters further when the claimant is required to present reliable supporting evidence. And, when an innocent person is named, the stories of their life, their work, their family, and their dreams can reveal the reckless cruelty of their accusers and rescue them from unjust punishment.

III

Days after I finished watching “Adolescence,” I came across a passage in a novel that reaffirmed for me the power of story. The book is the award-winning novel James by Percival Everett. It is a retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, through the first-person account of the fictional runaway slave Twain called “Jim.”

Both books center on the bond of friendship between the two main characters, one a grown black man and the other a questioning white boy, each scarred by the mores of the slave state from which they were venturing forth. In Everett’s newly imagined account, we learn that, to his fellow enslaved people, Jim goes by the more formal name “James.” And James is not only wise, as he was in Twain’s telling, but also literate. He talks in the manner of less educated slaves when white people are around because they would punish him if they found out he was actually quite eloquent and fully able to read and write. When James is with his family and friends, and when he narrates the book, he speaks and writes like the educated person he is, but in the presence of white people (including Huck) he conceals his literacy by talking the way they expect of him.

As in Twain’s novel, Everett’s protagonists are both running away; Huck to escape his father’s abuse, and James because he is suspected of killing Huck (who is presumed dead because he went missing). In the following passage, James describes a conversation he has with Huck after the two of them unexpectedly cross paths and join forces:

“Jim, you belong to Miss Watson, right? I mean you her property, right?”

“Dat right,” I said.

“So, truth is I’m stealin’ you from her.”

“Well, Huck, now you din’t zackly take me from her, did you? We sort of come dis way tagether.”

“But I didn’t give you back to her, did I?”

“No, you din’t.”

“So that’s like stealin’, right? If’n I took a mule from the side of the road and I knowed who it belonged to, wouldn’t that be stealin’?”

“I ain’t a mule, Huck.”

We drifted on.

“Ain’t I doin’ wrong, though?” Huck said. He was troubled. “How am I s’posed to know what good is?”

“Way I sees it is dis. If’n ya gots to hab a rule to tells ya wha’s good, if’n ya gots to hab good ‘splained to ya, den ya cain’t be good. If’n ya need sum kinda God to tells ya right from wrong, den you won’t never know.”

“But the law says . . .”

“Good ain’t got nuttin’ to do wif da law. Law says I’m a slave.”

We drifted on, our silence becoming quieter.

Here, Everett uses his story-telling acumen to distill concepts of human nature, unjust laws, and civil disobedience. It’s the same lesson that philosophers put forth abstractly, but in the hands of a talented novelist creating three-dimensional characters, an absorbing plot, and taut dialogue, it takes on significantly greater force. I imagine that most readers can’t leave that conversation without developing a greater respect and affection for James, Huck, and their real-world counterparts than they had going into it, as well as a keener understanding of a central theme in the lives and works of such luminaries as Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. And that’s all because a writer brings his readers on a vividly described journey with two imagined souls adrift on a raft in a mighty river.

IV

I am writing this post on Palm Sunday, a milestone in the Christian calendar in what is called “Holy Week.” This is the week that brings together the heart of the Christian story. It begins today, when Christians celebrate Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. It continues on Thursday, when we hear about the Last Supper, Judas’ betrayal, and Jesus’ arrest. Next comes Good Friday, when we are told of Jesus’ torture and crucifixion. And finally, there is Easter Sunday, the day Christians celebrate Jesus’ rising from the dead.

The four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are collections of stories of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Their storied nature, consisting of tangible descriptions of the words and deeds of real people, is partly responsible for Christianity’s centuries-long endurance. No impersonal and abstract philosophies, dogmas, creeds, or ideologies can compete with those often gritty, challenging, and uplifting stories for influence on Western culture. And although Christian teachings, like those of other religions, have too often been misappropriated for malicious ends, the stories of the four Gospels continue to generate empathy, understanding, and compassion in the many millions of people who approach them with pure intentions and open hearts.

V

Concrete stories about flesh and blood people, real or imagined, their struggles and their triumphs, have the capacity to foster empathy in those who give them their attention. They connect us with people, places, and times we otherwise could hardly imagine. Their telling is part of what make us human. They are indispensible tools for addressing the ills of our societies. They offer opportunities to advance worthy goals. Those who seek to shine more light into a light-starved world would do well to tell more of them.