Is Fantasy a dream or an escape?

[Gorothlammothiel]

After reading Daewen's post about either men or women preferring fantasy/sci-fi I was inspired to ask this, and did not want to intrude on the thread...

Do you think Fantasy is more popular amongst children or adults? And why? Is it a dream or an escape?

The reason I ask is that as children, most are brought up in a world of fairy stories with mythical beings, magical creatures and so forth. We are lost in the tales of things we don't expect to find in our own world and are quite happy to except these things are real, but just not with us. As a child it is more of a 'dream' to read or hear about such tales and one we are very willing to believe in.

After a time however, those 'dreams' are somewhat dashed as we are told they are not true, or cannot be real today by those older and 'wiser' than ourselves. To soften the blow there is sometimes the comment, "maybe they did exist a long time ago or still do in another land" which to me seems to be the whole point of fantasy. Either way, when those 'dreams' are dashed we become too busy for them and are pre-occupied with other things.

But, as an adult we may go out to a library or book shop and pick up a book, similar to those we had read as a child. Why do we pick it up? Is it to relive those dreams we once had or is it an escape from the real world that has become so hard, become so normal to you that you have to read this book to escape it all? To live in a land of fantasy with all those odd creatures and mysterious lands, even though you may well be in the belief it doesn't exist. Or does it exist within us? Do we as people have the capacity to keep these lands and tales within us and to keep the belief alive? The dreams we had as children were not dashed, just set aside with something else, something else that can now be put aside for that childhood once more?

[ January 04, 2003: Message edited by: Gorothlammothiel ]