Storytelling as Playful Practice toward Social Cohesion and Overcoming the Fear of Death

Abstract

Approaching Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s 2015 film, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl through an evolutionary literary perspective draws attention to the adaptive advantages of fictional storytelling with respect to the film’s treatment of three key universals of human evolution: the propensity toward social integration; overcoming one’s fear of death and dealing with grief; and transcending the emotional anxiety that accompanies the incomprehensible meaninglessness of a life that ends, inevitably, in death.