Stories - no culture is known to lack them

"The Gift of Adversity" a non-fiction book by Norman E. Rosenthal M.D.

page 231 "Stories are so fundamental to human lives that no culture is know that lacks them. Listening to stories, we hang on every word, riveted, and we care about the characters almost as if they are real. Two famous anecdotes - both favorites of mine - bring this lesson home.

When Charles Dickens "The Curiosity Shop" was first published in the United States, it was a serial. Each week's new chapter arrived by ship - and people knew it. When the angelic heroine, Little Nell, lay at death's door, thousands of New Yorkers met the boat. They simply had to know.  Did Little Nell die?  They called up to the ship's crew. "Is Little Nell Alive?"

Another famous story is told about a powerful version of "King Lear"produced by the Yiddish Theater in New York City in the early twentieth century. The actor playing Lear, the retired King thrown out of his home by his ungrateful granddaughters, so moved a woman in the audience that she stood up in the theater and chastised the daughters right in the middle of the play. "You should be ashamed of yourselves!" she cried out. Then, turning to lear she said, "You can come stay with us if you like.'"