Does Every Story Really Need to Be Relatable?

Modern storytelling seems to be obsessed with the concept of relatability. We seek to find a reflection of ourselves in every narrative. We ache for familiarity and representation. Characters must echo our voices, conflicts must mimic our dilemmas, and themes must match the headlines we already know by heart. We have turned literature into a house of mirrors—each story required to reflect us, flatter us, reassure us that we are the center of meaning. However not all art should comfort, some stories exist to disturb, confuse or alienate. They aim to evoke discomfort and expand beyond the standard, to be an anomaly.

Some stories are built like mazes, designed to disorient. Others are museums of emotions you’ve never named. Some are puzzles that don’t want solving. And some are cliffs you simply fall down.

The current literary ecosystem rewards the easily digestible. Platforms like Booktok have become the criteria on what's successful, they market relatability as a product. They show us what we want to see rather than what we need to. Only the same storylines that follow their guidelines are awarded with fame and success. So authors try to copy these requirements because these are the things that survive in the modern literary world. We swipe through curated reels of books praised not for their craft, but for how well they resemble us. Publishers, eager to please these algorithm-fed markets, chase stories that promise instant connection, emotional mirrors and soft truths. Authors lose their identities as writers in order to squish and fit into these molds.

Stories, of course, can include elements of relatability however when the author prioritizes this, in the process we lose creative freedom. If every author fixates on creating something relatable they might avoid the weird and alien which are essential in order to create something authentic. When authors begin writing for identification rather than expression, literature risks becoming a polite dinner guest: charming, agreeable, forgettable…

Art turns into a performance of likability, not a pursuit of truth. When the aspect of literature gets pushed into the background we risk fading the personality of the piece, turning our art into mere mirrors; passive, predictable,flat- rather than windows; introducing us into a new reality, adding another dimension.

We must ask ourselves: What do we lose when every story is tailored to be easily swallowed? We lose complexity. We lose silence. We jeopardize the power of art to reach beyond language, culture, and even comprehension. Everything slowly morphs into a blob of ordinary. Everything resembles each other, a dull loop. We trade the wild forest for well lit streets, safe but lacking excitement and adventure. Like mass produced furniture: familiar and functional but has no essence. Same themes, same tropes, same feelings.

It's the strange ones that outlive the ordinary. Stanley Kubrick for example understood this better than most. 2001: A Space Odyssey gives us no characters to identify with, no voiceover to guide us, no specific plot. It offers us a monolith, a silence, a baby floating in space and dares us to extract meaning. It doesn’t explain itself. It doesn't want to be liked. It wants to be witnessed. Kubrick’s films rarely invite you in through warmth to be fair. A Clockwork Orange makes you recoil. Eyes Wide Shut disorients with its dream-logic sexuality. The Shining doesn’t scare you in a fun, popcorn way with a scary monster or a combination of jumpscares—it haunts you with its geometry, its impossible corridors, its quiet madness. These are not “relatable” films, they do not offer understanding or comfort. But they possess you, they cling to you.

Literature, at its best, often does the same. Think about all the classics, they became classics because nothing of their kind has ever existed before. The reason they lingered over decades or even centuries is simply because they are groundbreaking. A modern reader can not relate to Homer or Odysseus but it doesn't stop us from adoring the literature. We do not sail home from decade-long wars, we do not blind cyclopes or speak to gods. Yet The Odyssey still pulses with life; not because it reflects us, but because it expands us.

You cannot relate to Oedipus Rex. You’ve (hopefully) never killed your father or married your mother. But Sophocles' tragedy continues to haunt us even after years because it forces us to confront fate, blindness, knowledge, and guilt. The story doesn’t survive because we see ourselves in Oedipus. It survives because it sees something ancient in us.

How about Wuthering Heights? It’s literally the first thing that pops into our minds when we think of classics however nobody in that novel is likable. Catherine and Heathcliff are cruel, obsessive, almost mythic in their violence and passion. The moors are harsh, the structure is disjointed, and the whole book feels like a fever dream. But we read it over and over. Not to feel seen but for the sense of feral and wild. Something that doesn’t fit into polite society or trending TikTok tropes of “aesthetic morally gray characters”. These works survived not because they were easy to identify with, but because they shattered something open. They carved out new emotional and intellectual territory.

Of course, relatability has its place. It would be arrogant to dismiss this concept entirely because sometimes to feel seen in a story can be a deeply affirming experience, especially for those who don't feel acknowledged in their own lives. For marginalized readers, a character who speaks their language, lives their reality, or carries their history can feel like a lifeline. Representation matters. Literature should offer mirrors sometimes—not as an indispensable element, but as a right. Relatability can spark empathy. It can close the gap between people, cultures, and generations. It can remind us that our private dilemmas are not entirely our own, but someone prior to us has already experienced it. But the problem arises when relatability becomes the goal instead of the consequence. When a story is born as an echo of the audience without a contribution to our inner worlds, literature ends up pandering around rather than provoking.

Relatability should be one of many tools a writer may use—not the fail or pass mark for value. The greatest stories can speak across time, culture, and identity: not because they are like us, but because they offer something beyond us. We should be able to hold both truths at once: that it is powerful to find yourself in a book, and equally powerful to lose yourself in an other.

To basically conclude my point: it's often the ungraspable that draws us in most fiercely. Yes it's easier to read something relatable, it feels like a wave of room temperature water; warm, comforting, soothing. But the weird, surreal one is like a flood of ice cold shower; it's shocking and disorienting: it lingers, it challenges, it grasps you.

By: Nil Çardak