Why do works of fiction move us?

When I was younger, there were a select few books that I loved reading, and would re-read them ad nauseam. One of these books, and perhaps my favorite of the bunch, was The Hatchet, by Gary Paulson. The story is about a young boy whose single engine plane crashes in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, and is forced to survive with nothing but a hatchet to protect himself. I remember the vivid imagery that would pop into my head as I turned from one page to the next, engrossed in this kid’s survival. I felt as if I could feel his hunger and exhaustion, but was also inspired by his sheer will to live, never giving up even in the most harrowing moments of the story. He does eventually get rescued after several weeks alone, and I remember feeling just as relieved as him when the rescue crew finally arrived. The funny thing is, how could I be so engrossed in a story that’s not real, cheer on a character that doesn’t exist? If it’s fictional, why even bother reading it? Are we actually learning anything from a story that never happened, feel emotions for fictional characters that we’ll never meet? This is a problem that I grappled with for years; for a long time, I refused to read any works of fiction, deeming them a waste of time. It was only recently that I truly understood again the value of fiction and why it is important. But what is it about fiction that has the ability to move us, to teach us lessons, to engross us in stories and worlds even when we know that they’re not real? There are several reasons for this, one of them being as an escape. There may be points throughout our days, weeks, months, etc, where we want to get away from the complexities and problems of the real world and instead lose ourselves in a different world, with characters we love to read and watch a setting that we want to know more about, and through this, fiction can be a great way to sustain and keep our mental health healthy. Fiction can also be a great way for us to learn valuable life lessons that can help us get through life easier. When we read about virtuous characters being rewarded for their deeds and bad characters punished for their unjust actions, it reinforces a moral code in us that pushes us to be virtuous in our daily lives, no doubt helping us in the long run. We can learn from the struggles of our main characters, pointing out their flaws in an attempt to better understand not just how the characters can improve, but look for those flaws in ourselves and try to see how we can improve ourselves. Ironically, it can be through the medium of fiction that we can learn the most about the world and ourselves. How to spot characters flaws and if they apply to ourselves, how the world can be perceived through eyes different from our own, even how to survive in the Canadian wilderness, it is precisely because we can learn a lot from fiction which is why we often find it so engrossing and has the ability to move us.