Flaws Of Narrative

All Narrative is inherently flawed and never accurately describes a given situation. A narrative is a retelling of something that happened. This can take on a variety of forms from words, painting, acting, the list is extensive and a full list is unnecessary here and impractical. It is important to note that the Narrative is not the story itself but the act in which is used to tell it. So an event captured on film and shared among a group is not a narrative. When a member of the group tells the story of the video is when it becomes a narrative. A story is a sequence of events whereas a narrative speaks of these events as they pertain to the narrator. The narrative is thus colored by the personal reality and the inherent weaknesses associated with memory and the human mind. Narrative is thus Rhetoric as it is meant to persuade the audience toward one conclusion or another. This concept explains that most of the narratives we use come from our personal experiences. When a friend or family member tells us about their day and what has gone wrong to what is good, they are telling us how they want us to see them. This need to steer the audience creates flaws within he story.

These inherent flaws range from a skewed emphasis on certain events, the absence of details deemed unimportant, altered memories, and possible embellishment.

These flaws are not always apparent to the narrator. “Without realizing it, people will perceive things according to how they want to see them.” (Dunning) When we input an event we do not input the entirety of the details involved. After this we process the information, comparing it to knowledge previously contained, then we apply our ethical and moral codes, and in the end we have a story unique to us. 20 people can watch an event and each will narrate the events slightly differently due to this. Our collective stories then come together to form our

culture.
All cultures throughout history use some kind of narrative to form morality tales, unity, and the culture itself. Narratives are stories, a basic building block of society and control the ways in which we interact. “The truth of stories is not only what was experienced, but equally what becomes experience in the tell and its reception.”(Arthur Frank) With the advent of technologies that enable near instantaneous communication anywhere in the world the alterations within the variety of cultures present on Earth have begun to lessen. Now when narrating a story there are less questions as to why events happened in certain ways and how it is negative is understood by a broader audience. Knowledge is available at an individual’s fingertips, interaction across cultural lines happens daily, and the various ideologies are available for anyone to discover. The world is shrinking and with it the cultural gap within narratives. That being said, a narrative will always and forever be individual. While the knowledge and experiences may be shared by many it will never be received by people in the same way. Each person’s narrative is their own.