Storytelling — Philosophical Stakes

Michael Arndt argues that a story's philosophical stakes, the moral or metaphysical question it turns on, are what separate good endings from great ones and constitute the story's meaning. The author applies this to Jurassic Park, arguing it is about dinosaurs rather than Alan Grant's relationship with children, as Matthew Dicks's stakes-based model would suggest. The author's example is that the series finale, Jurassic World: Dominion, treats a world with wild dinosaurs as normal and makes saving that world the philosophical stake. The article also argues that most personal stories have few philosophical stakes.