I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to

Hear now the words of George Saunders, a weaver of strange tales, whose wisdom is clothed in humor yet hides the gravity of human sorrow. He proclaims: “I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he’s made of sugar.” This is not mere jest, nor the random whimsy of a writer. It is the unveiling of a secret law of storytelling: that the heart awakens most fully not in the easy sunshine of life, but when it beholds fragility laid bare against the storm.

When Saunders speaks of bleakness, he speaks of the dark soil in which the seed of compassion grows. To “cleave the character in half, on his birthday” is to strike when the contrast is greatest—joy turned suddenly to sorrow, celebration torn into tragedy. The rain that falls upon the sugar-flesh of the character is the weight of life itself, melting what was once solid, showing us how delicate existence truly is. In such moments of invented cruelty, Saunders reveals the strange paradox of art: that when characters suffer in the crucible, the reader feels their humanity most deeply.

This wisdom is not confined to fiction. Consider the true tale of Abraham Lincoln, who lost his beloved son Willie while yet burdened with the fate of a nation torn in civil war. It was Lincoln’s grief, his visible weakness, that caused the people to see him not as a distant ruler, but as a father like themselves, bowed by sorrow. That shared recognition—his rain upon the sugar of his heart—made the nation’s sympathy for him swell, and strengthened their trust in his leadership. Thus Saunders’ teaching finds echo in history: sympathy arises when we witness the breaking of another, and in their breaking, we recognize ourselves.

The meaning of Saunders’ quote is layered. On one hand, it is playful exaggeration—what more absurd image than a man of sugar dissolving in rain? Yet beneath the humor lies truth: people are fragile, laughably so. We are, each of us, made of substances that yield too easily to time, to pain, to fate. By acknowledging this fragility with wit, Saunders brings us closer to compassion, for laughter and sorrow are siblings in the house of wisdom.

But take heed: Saunders also reminds us that drama is not born of cruelty for cruelty’s sake. It is born of purpose. To shatter a character in fiction, as to suffer loss in life, is meaningful when it invites the awakening of tenderness. Without the sympathy it generates, tragedy is hollow spectacle. With it, however, tragedy becomes the vessel of insight. It urges us to see others not as distant figures, but as fragile beings like ourselves—sugar in the rain, soft and easily broken.

What, then, is the lesson? It is this: do not flee from bleakness, for it is often the teacher of compassion. In life, just as in stories, when you see others shattered by grief, when you witness rain falling upon their fragile hearts, do not turn away. Allow your own sympathy to awaken, for in that moment you share in their humanity. And when your own days of bleakness arrive—and they will—know that your breaking, too, may awaken compassion in others.

Therefore, beloved seeker, live not only in the sunshine but with courage in the storm. Do not be ashamed of your fragility; it is the secret that binds you to the rest of humankind. And in your art, in your words, in your deeds, do not be afraid to show the sugar melting in the rain. For from that dissolving sweetness arises the greatest power of all: the power of shared feeling, the power of sympathy, the power of love that endures even through the bleakest night.