Chapter 4 of The Storytelling Animal is rather simple to digest. It follows the formula set forth by previous chapter, so the argument follows the same structure. It begins with a narrative to hook the reader, argues both sides of various topics around the subject, and concludes that the subject is a form a storytelling that helps us practice or prepare for real life problems. In chapter 4, the subject in hand is dreams. Interestingly, in this chapter, the primary argument is split into two different places. He states that dreams are night stories (70) that give us practice in real life dilemmas (83). Gottschall’s primary argument is far weaker in chapter 4 than previous chapters because it is essentially a clone of chapter 3 with the idea
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“Dreams are for practice. In dreams, animals rehearse their responses to the sorts of problems that are most germane to their survival” (78). Human problems most germane to survival include not only physical problems, but social and emotional as well. He uses his own dreams as evidence as a proximate authority to confirm this (80). He also references a 2009 review of the threatening aspects of dreams by Katja Valli and Antti Revonsuo (81-82). It also applies directly to other animals, such as cats. Pages 76 and 77 recall the experiment conducted by Michael Jouvet in which he cut cats’ brain stems just enough so that they physically acted out their dreams. While still mentally in dreamland, the cats’ body language exhibited behavior of hunting and being hunted. This point alone is effective enough to support the argument, but many more are given. Gottschall brings Harry Hunt’s skepticism to attention on pages 85 and 86, but swiftly refutes it. He shows that Hunt’s argument is invalid because he was only looking at a small group of dreams and using it as basis for a statement about all dreams. He then validates himself by referencing community authorities Valli and Revonsuo. For this secondary argument, every point is proven and all counter arguments are disproven. All of the secondary arguments are very interesting and persuasive on their own. However, dreams had already been proven as night stories in chapter 1. Gottschall already used the human hand analogy in chapter 2. Fiction was already established as simulator for real life in chapter 3. For these reasons, the argument of chapter 4 as a whole is crippled by a lack of readers’ interest. The use of repetition is risky, and can have hit or miss results. The result in this specific case is a
“Dreams are for practice. In dreams, animals rehearse their responses to the sorts of problems that are most germane to their survival” (78). Human problems most germane to survival include not only physical problems, but social and emotional as well. He uses his own dreams as evidence as a proximate authority to confirm this (80). He also references a 2009 review of the threatening aspects of dreams by Katja Valli and Antti Revonsuo (81-82). It also applies directly to other animals, such as cats. Pages 76 and 77 recall the experiment conducted by Michael Jouvet in which he cut cats’ brain stems just enough so that they physically acted out their dreams. While still mentally in dreamland, the cats’ body language exhibited behavior of hunting and being hunted. This point alone is effective enough to support the argument, but many more are given. Gottschall brings Harry Hunt’s skepticism to attention on pages 85 and 86, but swiftly refutes it. He shows that Hunt’s argument is invalid because he was only looking at a small group of dreams and using it as basis for a statement about all dreams. He then validates himself by referencing community authorities Valli and Revonsuo. For this secondary argument, every point is proven and all counter arguments are disproven. All of the secondary arguments are very interesting and persuasive on their own. However, dreams had already been proven as night stories in chapter 1. Gottschall already used the human hand analogy in chapter 2. Fiction was already established as simulator for real life in chapter 3. For these reasons, the argument of chapter 4 as a whole is crippled by a lack of readers’ interest. The use of repetition is risky, and can have hit or miss results. The result in this specific case is a