the brooklyn follies part 2

The story of the doll

During the final year of his life, when he was living in Berlin, Kafka apparently liked to go for an afternoon walk in the park. One day he happened to meet a young girl who was sobbing for having lost her doll. To cheer her up, Kafka explained that the doll ‘has gone off on a trip’. As evidence, for the next three weeks he produced every day a letter written by the doll, met her at the park and read it to her. In time, the little girl stopped missing her plaything: Because Kafka gave her a story, a story where the doll got married in the end and when a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists’.

Can storytelling ease our personal grief? I think it can...