I read Cat’s Cradle recently and came across the word everyman through its Wikipedia entry. Then, of course, began the Wikipedia hyperlink highway and tabs after tabs kept popping up automatically in my browser window, and before I knew it I was a few hours into it…

But anyway, the idea of an everyman is nothing new and you’d often find this concept in a lot of works of fiction. There are exceptions, naturally, but the general trend seems to be to include an everyman in one form or another - and that is a bit interesting in that it seems to indicate a certain sense of a craving to be unremarkable and comfortable expressed by the authors - and the fact that such works of fiction end up being highly cherished by readers and/or viewers also seems to imply a need for comfort on their part. Irrespective of culture or Zeitgeist this concept seems timeless and ever-present. Do most of us want to be everymen (or more neutrally, everypersons)?

What better time to find comfort than now, when everything in the world seems so uncertain? Even though reading books, listening to music, and watching movies are activities that are artificial in nature and essentially distractions from reality, there is a feeling of warmth they provide which is often missed in other aspects of existence. Of course, taken to an extreme, it may be somewhat unhealthy (can’t expect our dishes and taxes to be done by a mythical creature, can we?) but our daily lives can be made fairly interesting with occasional doses of everymannery. Now, interesting is a very subjective term and can easily become a bottomless ontological trapdoor - but in short, the supposed real world with an occasional Narnian escape cupboard is probably good for our well-being.

While at it, there actually is some work that’s gone into using books as a means for healing. See this.