Today, when many insist that racial and ethnic differences are unbridgeable, novels reassure us unequivocally that we can understand, and learn from, one another. As the man struggles with his impending death, friends make obligatory visits to his bedside. They seem unable to share his anguish, or grasp that death will one day visit them. They had worked with the sick and dying for years, they said, but until they read Tolstoy's short book, they had never understood the nature or depth of their patients' suffering. After watching death's slow approach through the eyes of Ivan Ilyich, they felt capable of a new degree of empathy and compassion.
Great novels are a repository of the accumulated wisdom of the human race.
In their pages, we can watch a rich procession of characters wrestle with dilemmas we ourselves may face, and see the consequences of their choices unfold. By helping us understand why others' lives succeed, or why they fail, novels teach us how to live more wisely and fully ourselves.