the roles of art

to accentuate the degree of something beyond any attempt to achieve or attain anything other than experience and through that, information.  If at fails to impart experience, then it is decorative in nature and the intent may be to persuade.  Persuasion is the bending of character perhaps into a place where it may not feel at all familiar, but which inhabits all the same, the shape of events that the story takes you being contrary or in conflict with the moral quality of the plot.  Character is the division between actors.  Actors carry their own sword into the battle that the story plays.