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The truth about stories
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In making stories: Law, Literature, Life, Jerome Brunner drives one to contemplate about the characteristics of stories, but also to consider the various ways one uses them to sail across the predicament of a human beings experiences. Narratives are set to be congenital and one understands allegedly how they work. We hardly take the time to think on how our narratives or whoever’s, constrain us, and why chronicles have the power to overhaul our beliefs as well as get in the way of our intellect, or how they brunt our humanoid institutions. In addition, it’s contended that stories are the “building blocks” of human experiences and are also a very important piece to what we call “Self” along with the emblem to our interactions with society, it also distinguishes one apart from the exceedingly assertive humanoid institutions, in spite of, Law. Making Stories drifts in the argument that narrative is crucial for our soundness, reason and education in explaining and understanding human experiences.
The Uses of Story: according to Brunner, a story is illustrious from a trouncing string of events by a peripeteia; a sudden reversal in circumstances: “a seemingly true-blue English Oxbridge physician turns out to have leaking atomic secrets to the Russians, or a presumably merciful god all of a sudden asks the faithful Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.” (Brunner.pp.5). Due to our vulnerability to narratives, one comes to await and believe in the traditional everyday experiences in a story. Stories display a sense of roadway to confront errors as well as surprises occurring in our daily lives. As humans, one is not always ambitious to exhibit our proclivity to stories. Brunner opens one’s mind to understanding the adamant truthfulness of l...
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...to this matter, physicians are regularly unsuccessful in understanding clues that a peculiar treatment is faulty.
Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life grasps one upon to the discussion of in what way; stories operate in our normal lives, inclusively on how stories can benefit us as a changing force for diversity. I believe, Bruner, impels us to look microscopically at what ourselves have formerly perceived only instinctively; people interacting across narratives. Stories, evidently, are plenty beyond than amusing aberrations from the good and bad times we have gone through in the past; they can abide as portals to truths and one’s integrity that befalls hidden behind the cloak of “facts” that we mainly, frequently alone, trouble ourselves along with. It was clear to me that the aforementioned was the utmost memorandum one could have perceived from the publication.
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
Often, when a story is told, it follows the events of the protagonist. It is told in a way that justifies the reasons and emotions behind the protagonist actions and reactions. While listening to the story being cited, one tends to forget about the other side of the story, about the antagonist motivations, about all the reasons that justify the antagonist actions.
Desperately confused, this everyday writer tries to step out of his culture and experience a whole new world. Day after day, this half ton gorilla, Ishmael, opens the narrators eyes and teaches him "how things came to be." He starts out by dividing man into two different cultures. He calls the people of our culture takers and the people of all other cultures leavers. Each culture has a story. In Ishmael's teachings, a story is a scenario interrelating man, the world, and the gods. This story is enacted by the people in a culture. In other words, people in a culture live as to make the story a reality.
Stories are a means of passing on information, acting as a medium to transport cultural heritage and customs forward into the future. In his essay titled "You'll Never Believe What Happened," King says that, "The truth about stories is that that's all we are” (King Essay 2). Contained within this statement is a powerful truth: without stories, a society transcending the limitations of time could not exist. Cultures might appear, but they would inevitably die away without a means of preservation. Subsequent generations would be tasked with creating language, customs, and moral laws, all from scratch. In a way, stories form the core of society's existence.
This is an explorative essay on the theme in Patricia Grace’s novel Potiki that ‘telling and retelling stories is an important and valuable part of being human’.
In his Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer assembles a band of pilgrims who, at the behest of their host, engage in a story-telling contest along their route. The stories told along the way serve a number of purposes, among them to entertain, to instruct, and to enlighten. In addition to the intrinsic value of the tales taken individually, the tales in their telling reveal much about the tellers. The pitting of tales one against another provides a third level of complexity, revealing the interpersonal dynamics of the societal microcosm comprising the diverse group of pilgrims.
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."
Wilson, M. & Clark, R. (n.d.). Analyzing the Short Story. [online] Retrieved from: https://www.limcollege.edu/Analyzing_the_Short_Story.pdf [Accessed: 12 Apr 2014].
Narratives are an important part of an essay as they create a sense of tone needed to describe a story or situation with ease. If the narrative is not correct, it can leave a false impact on the readers or viewers because it lacks the main tone of the story. Having a perfect narrative can not only enhance a story, but it can also prove evidence. In her essay, “An Army of One: Me”, Jean Twenge provides some of the best examples of how narratives enhance a story and she also emphasizes on how the tone of storytelling matters on the impact that the story would have on its readers or listeners. Apart from Twenge, Tim O’Brien also focuses on how the narrative of the story can help in understanding the truth and falsity of the story in his essay, “How to Tell a True War Story.” In addition to O’Brien, Ethan Watters also emphasizes on the narrative of cultural progress in his essay, “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan”, when he talks about the anti-depressants to be sold in Japan. All three authors agree to the fact that narrative, the art of telling a story or explaining a situation, has a major impact on the story and on how it is taken by the audience.
In much of The Things They Carried, stories are retold time and time again. One reason for this is the idea of keeping a story’s story-truth alive. In “Good Form,” O’Brien differentiates what he calls story-truth from happening-truth. Story-truth seems to give us a better understanding of O’Brien’s sentiment in a particular story even though the story itself may not be true at all. On the other hand, happening-truth is what actually happened in the story, but may not contain as much emotional authenticity as story-truth. According to O’Brien, story-truth is therefore truer than happening-truth. Relating back to storytelling, O’Brien retells stories continuously to maintain their sentiment and emotional value. Without this continuous repetition, this sentiment fades away and the emotional value of the story is lost.
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
Humans are creatures of this planet that act in complex ways. A writer’s job is often defined as a way to reveal the complexity of the characteristics of people and to illustrate them. John Steinbeck the author, Of Mice and Men, exemplifies a multitude of characters that have an overall lonely existence. Although most are unhappy, Lennie Small is a warm-hearted, sympathetic man. Lennie has the unfortunate aptitude of carrying out massive destruction in others life’s, even though, it was never intended.
In ‘unreliable narration’ the narrator’s account is at odds with the implied reader's surmises about the story’s real intentions. The story und...
In the story “Two Kinds”, the author, Amy Tan, intends to make reader think of the meaning behind the story. She doesn’t speak out as an analyzer to illustrate what is the real problem between her and her mother. Instead, she uses her own point of view as a narrator to state what she has experienced and what she feels in her mind all along the story. She has not judged what is right or wrong based on her opinion. Instead of giving instruction of how to solve a family issue, the author chooses to write a narrative diary containing her true feeling toward events during her childhood, which offers reader not only a clear account, but insight on how the narrator feels frustrated due to failing her mother’s expectations which leads to a large conflict between the narrator and her mother.
In the simplest form, there is a basic structural pattern to narratives, as expressed through Tzvetan Todorov’s explanation of narrative movement between two equilibriums. A narrative begins in a stable position until something causes disequilibrium, however, by the end of the story, the equilibrium is re-established, though it is different than the beginning (O’Shaughnessy 1999: 268). Joseph Cam...