Expository Essay: Why Do We Tell Stories?

Why Do We Tell Stories?

Why do we tell stories? What can stories change? A story is an account of past events in someone's life or in the evolution of something. Stories we tell can often take a toll on someone’s life, because it is a way of keeping memoires alive that might have faded once before. After telling stories it may be worth remembering, although sometimes stories we tell are exaggerated, or only what we remember, we tell stories because it is apart of life. If it was not for storytelling, what would even exist in history? The bible is the oldest story told to man. The Bible is also the oldest story to ever be told. Stories we tell do largely overlap however, creating a common core. Similar to when we hear stories that are passed

down in our families. Sarah Polly’s, Tim O`Brien, and Darnton tell stories in a similar to the way the Bible has changed many times, all with a common core.
Sarah Polley’s story was created through a documentary, The Stories We Tell. Sarah Polley decided to share to the world about her family’s past by making a documentary which involved people that were constantly involved in Diane Polley`s life. The film depicts the relationships between Michael and Diane Polley, including the revelation that the filmmaker was the product of an extramarital affair between her mother and a friend, Harry also. By Diane Polley dying a couple of years after Sarah Polley was born, there was a lot of controversy going on about who was father of Sarah Polley. It includes interviews with Polley's siblings from her mother's two marriages, interviews with other relatives and family friends, Michael Polley's narration of his memoir. With the stories they tell, Polley discovers that she may not be the biological child of the man who raised her. Polley called this movie Stories We Tell because she wants the world to know that every family is not as perfect as people expect them to be and some families experience the same controversies as her family did. By making a film about her life and not having her mothers side to tell, “that’s really the only person who could provide the essence, about the essentials of what took place” (Gulkin). The stories that everyone told her, both true and made up, revealed the truth about her mother, her family's history and eventually, her biological father. Although not every story was true, each story included history. If these stories had not been told, Polley would not have questioned her family history, nor would she have found her biological father.
Although Sarah Polley told stories in many different ways, in the book The Things They Carried Tim O`Brien told a a collection of short stories, about a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. In this novel Tim O`Brien depicts himself as a Vietnam veteran that is recounting his experiences during the war, as well as being a writer during the was who is examining the mechanics behind writing stories about the war. The use of real names and inclusion of himself as the protagonist within the book creates a style that meshes and blurs the fiction and non-fiction. Tim O`Brien states in the book “by telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down the certain truths” (158). Tim O`Brien means he does not look at stories he tells as being a therapy to his life, he depicts his stories on how they are apart of his past, and who he is now as a direct result on telling these stories. The book's style helps distinguish O'Brien’s literary approach from other authors. The Things They Carried is an accurate depiction of the Vietnam War by using stories of soldiers and creating new stories based off of their rhetorical accounts of their experiences.
Unlike Tim O`Brien, Darton used stories to create entertaining fairy tales.

In Robert Darnton`s article the “Peasants Tell Tales”, he shows that every fairy tale depicts the true struggles of the everyday French peasant life. Darnton showed that life was difficult for the peasants, like in the tale “Les Trois Fileuses”, but most of the tales told turns into a program for survival, not a fantasy of escape. The almost unbelievable truth of Darton’s time created stories that told history as we never knew and we could never know without his interpretation of peasant’s tales. In Darton’s Peasant Tales, he describes the truth in accounts that are folk like and untrue due to the way the story is told. During the eighteenth-century in France, peasant families could not survive under the Old Regime unless everyone worked together simultaneously. The folktale told shows that child labor life was hard, harsh and all the children did was work. Stories about “Les Toris Fileuses” told the truth about child laboring in the eighteenth century. He tells history that lives on forever. Folktales show how rough and harsh the societies were but, there are remnants of this survivalist show mentality in modern France, it also lets readers know that the culture is still in existence. Unlike the French folktales, Darnton felt as the American folktales tend to always have a happy ending, but the stories they tell simply are not as realistic like the French tales. In the American society people

produce tales that generated unrealistic ideas and happy endings. Compared to French tales, they provide more graphic details which could can been seen as disturbing or false like. Without Darton’s tales that people are so eager to read, he wouldn’t have been able to keep history alive and understandable. Darton took the experiences of people who lived in that time and created a fictional character; Mother Goose. Fiction and non-fiction can all come together to tell a complete tale off of the historic truth with enlightenment of a corrupt time.
Whether you are telling a story to entertain, discover or create, stories to keep history alive, behind every story, there is a truth or a myth that derived from a truth. A story can provide you with the truth, like Sarah Polley’s film, create a way to maintain history in entertaining like Darton’s tales, or inform the world about a time in history that is often misinterpreted like Tim O’Brien’s. We tell stories for different reasons, some similar to others. Some people tell stories to understand people differently or we tell stories on how or why we feel a certain type of way on some days. It’s a way of finding common ground and sharing different experiences with someone. Stories people tell are always considered an oral restoration of events and memories that will die otherwise.