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Essay about writing stories
Essay on Importance of stories
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Storytelling’s impact on people who use it has been life saving in certain cases. By asserting the existence of different perspectives, writers get to suppress their own opinions in order to sympathize with others. (insert thing about meta-fiction) With this idea in mind, author Kate Taylor wrote the novel Serial Monogamy, a meta-fiction of a writer recalling the story of her husband’s affair and her deal with terminal breast cancer, all through her telling of Dickens’ secret life and tales of the Arabian Nights. In Serial Monogamy, storytelling makes people more understanding as they explore new perspectives.
Sharon, through her telling of Nelly’s story, gets to understand the mistress’ perspective. By trying to see how a mistress might
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At first, Sharon tries to see life from his perspective with his childhood background when he used to live in Tehran. When Al was young, “In this happy, balanced world, [he] was the neighbourhood marble king” (313). This passage is relevant because it shows how Al felt as a kid. Sharon tries to understand her husband’s dreams, fears and feelings through the way he was brought up in his natal country. By imagining him as a king, the narrator understands how Al has always felt like he deserved an important place in this world. Moreover, Sharon understands more Al’s need for power as he resembles Dickens a lot when it comes to love relationships. The two adulterous husbands are admired by their younger mistresses, as we can see with Shay’s image of Al: “she also assumed her inspiring supervisor, blessed in every aspect of life, must be happily married too” (168). This quote shows how both Nelly and Al’s mistresses were younger women who admired the two men, which is exactly what Al and Dickens must have been looking for in the affairs: a sense of power, importance. By giving Dickens his place in her story, Sharon is accepting that even in every great man, there is a portion of humanity. Finally, Al and the prince in the Arabian nights’ story told in the book share the same charming, confident, and arrogant traits. Sharon’s telling of “The …show more content…
In fact, the main character is even aware of her change of character when it comes to being a writer. When recalling how her writer side would have attempted to understand the contradictory opinion of her editor Jonathan, Sharon states that “sometimes [she] think[s] the novelist is [her] better self, interested, understanding, wanting to know more” (277). (add explanation) Also, a comparison between Sharon and Scheherazade as storytellers can be made, demonstrating the importance of storytelling for both women. In the final part of Serial Monogamy, Hope expresses to the two daughters Sharon’s heritage: “if people ask where you came from, tell them your father was a prince of Persia and your mother a storyteller from Samarkand. And no one could ever really say which one seduced the other” (341). The fact that Hope was able to see Sharon as her best self shows how the storytelling characterized the writer so much that she became one with the Scheherazade from Arabian nights. Just like the famous storyteller, Sharon was able to grow with storytelling and made it part of her heritage. Through the telling of her own story, Sharon is able to accept her situation enough so that she can share her texts with her daughters without any bad intentions. At the very beginning of the book, Sharon emotionally expresses her final feelings toward Al and Hope for her daughters to read: “Please don’t think I wrote
This type of "narrative" writing gives believability to the people, and a sense of realism to the story.
Literary critic, Walter Wells, states this in his analysis of the two pieces, writing that “both protagonists have come to realize that romantic gestures -- in fact, that the whole chivalric world view -- are, in modern times, counterproductive” (Wells 3). Both protagonists, being either a child or just a year into his adulthood, lacks a true understanding of the world around them. Motivated by their incomplete knowledge of the world and the people around them, they act out in a grand gesture, hoping to attract the attention and admiration of Mangan’s sister for the narrator in Araby and Queenie for Sammy in A&P. However, due to the same, flawed ideology of the workings of the world that motivates them to carry out their plan, it ultimately leads to their downfall. In conclusion, both pieces of literature show that life is a process of maturation by learning from one’s failures. Both the Narrator from Araby and Sammy from A&P fail in their original goal of gaining the affection of the girls through their grand gestures. Furthermore, both characters, in acting out their plan, realize their lack of understanding of the world and thus loose their innocence. Finally, through their growth, they are able to, by
As people age they will often still recall a good childhood story. A well told, meaningful story can go a long way when attempting to argue a point or convey information. In the essays, ''The Myth of The Latin Women: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria" by Judith Ortiz Cofer, "Gains and Losses" by Richard Rodriquez, and "Piecing It All Together" by bell hooks, the authors connect to the reader and create a better audience through their writing. Through the portrayal of a story the authors help the reader understand their point of view, they transfer information to the reader with better ease, and keep the reader engaged the authors argue a point or convey information more efficiently.
John Updike's A & P and James Joyce's Araby share many of the same literary traits. The primary focus of the two stories revolves around a young man who is compelled to decipher the difference between cruel reality and the fantasies of romance that play in his head. That the man does, indeed, discover the difference is what sets him off into emotional collapse. One of the main similarities between the two stories is the fact that the main character, who is also the protagonist, has built up incredible, yet unrealistic, expectations of women, having focused upon one in particular towards which he places all his unrequited affection. The expectation these men hold when finally "face to face with their object of worship" (Wells, 1993, p. 127) is what sends the final and crushing blow of reality: The rejection they suffer is far too great for them to bear.
Experiences such as these compelled me to start writing. Writing became my outlet for empathizing with others and valuing different ways of life. Also, I enjoyed stringing together various plot elements to form an articulate story much- as I would soon learn- how doctors consider several factors when deducing a diagnosis. Ultimately, my chief goal in writing was to understand and define
1. Growing up we all heard stories. Different types of stories, some so realistic, we cling onto them farther into our lives. Stories let us see and even feel the world in different prespectives, and this is becuase of the writter or story teller. We learn, survive and entertain our selves using past experiences, which are in present shared as stories. This is why Roger Rosenblatt said, "We are a narrative species."
Mueller expresses how stories allow children to achieve the impossible, such as flying when they are incapable and discovering the unknown. Stories give a life to the people who are unable to live, and that is one of the reasons why imagination is so essential to our world. The sharing of tales bring genuine joy to people without the need of materialistic items; it gives people the chance to relate to the author on a common ground. The sense of shared joy and mutual connection brings people closer together and expands on relationships. People begin to feel as if they are apart of an imagined community, which is a community in which people perceive themselves to be apart of, through common interests or relations from media or works of literature. Communities such as these allow people to connect with each other, despite never crossing paths. It allows the birth and the strengthening of relationships, for when people begin to converse with others, the first thing they do is find common experiences or interests that they share. In addition, a quote from Mueller, herself, adds to why we tell stories: “Because the story of our life becomes our life. Because each of us tell the same story but tell it differently, and none of us tells it the same way twice.” Tales are devised with the incorporation of the narrator’s imagination; it is a way to
Arp and Johnson are correct, “Literary fiction plunges us, through the author’s imaginative vision and artistic ability, more deeply into the real world, enabling us to understand life’s difficulties and to empathize with others.” To have that ability to understand and share the feelings of another through words on a paper is powerful. You see the truth through many authors’ eyes and make the scenario in your mind only wanting to understand every aspect of what’s going on and what’s going to happen and after you come out in the oddest way with this new visionary on things after just reading something so small.
In the novel She and in the stories of The Arabian Nights, both Haggard and Haddawy explore the expanding gender roles of women within the nineteenth century. At a time that focused on the New Woman Question, traditional gender roles were shifted to produce greater rights and responsibilities for women. Both Ayesha, from Haggard’s novel She, and Shahrazad, from Haddawy’s translation of The Arabian Nights, transgress the traditional roles of women as they are being portrayed as strong and educated females, unwilling to yield to men’s commands. While She (Ayesha) takes her power to the extreme (i.e. embodying the femme fatale), Shahrazad offers a counterpart to She (i.e. she is strong yet selfless and concerned with the welfare of others). Thus, from the two characters emerge the idea of a woman who does not abide by the constraints of nineteenth century gender roles and, instead, symbolizes the New Woman.
When a person becomes trapped in a situation that stems from an individual with greater authority, being manipulative can be a very promising method to escape. The Thousand and One Nights does a very good job of being a good example of someone in this situation that uses stories within a story to capture encapsulate the attention of the reader. Despite the many little stories that go into the text, the main story behind it all is about a king named King Shahrayar and how he goes insane after catching his wife having sexual relations with a slave. After he sees this happen, he realizes that he can never trust any woman again and none of them are trustworthy. By expressing his views on women, he decides to marry a different woman every night, then the next morning have them killed by beheading. This is an ongoing event that brings death to most of the women in the village. Soon after, the king’s Vizier’s daughter, Shahrazad, came up with a brilliant idea that will end up saving her fellow countrywomen and hopefully keep the king from murdering so many innocent people. Her method behind all this is by telling the kind a different story every night that leaves him on a cliffhanger, making him curious enough to keep her alive for another day to continue her story. Shahrazad keeps herself spared from the king because of her cunning, and compassionate personality.
Throughout “Araby”, the main character experiences a dynamic character shift as he recognizes that his idealized vision of his love, as well as the bazaar Araby, is not as grandiose as he once thought. The main character is infatuated with the sister of his friend Mangan; as “every morning [he] lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door…when she came on the doorstep [his] heart leaped” (Joyce 108). Although the main character had never spoken to her before, “her name was like a summons to all [his] foolish blood” (Joyce 108). In a sense, the image of Mangan’s sister was the light to his fantasy. She seemed to serve as a person who would lift him up out of the darkness of the life that he lived. This infatuation knew no bounds as “her image accompanied [him] even in places the most hostile to romance…her name sprang to [his] lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which [he] did not understand” (Joyce 109). The first encounter the narrator ex...
Polygamy has been a worldwide issue for many years. It is the idea of one man having many wives and together they are raising one big family. Nonetheless, it may sound appealing to some people, yet dreadful to others. The focus here is a female being raised in a polygamist environment with three or more moms heavily informs her perception of the world and other cultures out of her community. They are taught that their education is insignificant, men are more superior to women, and outsiders are to be avoided.
The visual and emblematic details established throughout the story are highly concentrated, with Araby culminating, largely, in the epiphany of the young unnamed narrator. To Joyce, an epiphany occurs at the instant when the essence of a character is revealed, when all the forces that endure and influence his life converge, and when we can, in that moment, comprehend and appreciate him. As follows, Araby is a story of an epiphany that is centered on a principal deception or failure, a fundamental imperfection that results in an ultimate realization of life, spirit, and disillusionment. The significance is exposed in the boy’s intellectual and emotional journey from first love to first dejection,
James Joyce’s “Araby” and the story of “A & P” by John Updike have many characteristic similarities as well as literary traits. These stories focus on a young man trying to learn the difference between the romantic fantasies that play in their mind and the bitterness that reality can bring to a young man. In both stories a young man has built an unrealistic expectation of women only to meet the tragic despair of being rejected by the object of their boyish fantasy. In both of these stories the authors choose to show that life is not always what it may always appear.