Stories

Last year I wrote designed my curriculum loosely around the idea of storytelling, and my classes and I came to some pretty interesting conclusions:
1. We got to just bathe in archetypes. I should probably be over how cool these are, but we talked the "are these stories from one original source or do their similarities illuminate something important about being human" issue to death. To no definite conclusion of course. Self-indulgent and lovely.
2. We talked about stories as culture. I think I came to a greater appreciation of Judaism's reverence for the book...the compilation of the old testament started in earnest after the Babylonian scattering of the ten tribes. Putting together a story was a defense against getting lost. I love this idea.
3. I made them read Aristotle and we discussed catharsis--not only personal, but communal emoting and its importance. Moreover, I started thinking about the point of story. We learn that stories have a beginning, middle, and end, so that in the midst of hard times we can look forward to resolution and closure. We read events in our lives this way and it allows us to find meaning in the chaos. The form gives us hope.

In class lately we've been discussing Whitman. Particularly I want to talk about Whitman's mourning poetry. So Whitman was all for the poet-as-prophet figure. He imagined himself as a seer of sorts, that his job was to interpret events for the rest of us, right, and to create a new American consciousness. What I'm wondering is if that's true or even possible. I guess I'm reevaluating the conclusions I came to about stories, or trying to understand the underlying principles.

I was always taught that Christ taught in parables so everyone could understand the truth he was trying to present on whatever level they were ready for. We all read fairy tales when we were little, too, and maybe took some sort of wisdom from them (did we all learn to be the rescuing prince or passive princess at the knees of the Brothers Grimm? I'm not sure...). And I read "Understanding Comics" last year--it has this interesting insight into non-representational comics, that the fewer details a character's face has, the easier it is to insert ourselves into the story, the more universal it becomes (I'm not sure where McCloud was coming from, I'm sure he has a more authoritative theoretical background somewhere...).

So we take for granted that stories teach, that we insert ourselves into stories...but, I don't know, do they? Can someone else's narrative bring meaning into our own lives? And I suspect it's more complicated than this (I just finished reading Lord of the Rings and I definitely related to the characters and imagined myself in the story, but was I absorbing/reaffirming values? Were the emotions I was feeling anything more than entertainment?), that stories are doing something more/different than explicitly teaching point a or value b. But what?

Have you ever had a discussion with someone which you thought went really poorly: that they didn't agree with you at all, that you made no difference in their thinking, but then they end up doing just what you asked them to? Or, on the flip side, gave someone advice thinking they would do precisely what you suggested and that their lives would change, and they seemed to be amenable to your suggestion, but ended up doing not a thing, not changing at all? I wonder if sometimes adults tell stories (particularly didactic stories, parables and fables and things) thinking they're having some sort of influence when actually kids resist the moral, though enjoy (or not) the story?

I don't know, I guess I've always assumed the power of story, the power of the word, but wonder, finally, how to understand it best.

Whitman might have created a new Lincoln, but might not have. I don't know that I feel a need to tell/hear the story of 9-11 (though, to be fair, I might be sort of a sociopath). I do keep telling people/myself the story of, like, failed relationships, trying to find some meaning there.

And. And, in an effort to come to terms with my early life, I've been asking my mom to tell me the story of my childhood. This is important: my family was never one for storytelling. There are entire years of my childhood shrouded in shame and secrecy. And I think I feel the loss. In Gilmore Girls, Lorelai wakes Rorie every birthday with the story of her birth day. Part of me thinks that it's the responsibility of a parent to give their children a consciousness of their childhood through storytelling: this is who you are. This is your story.

The other part of me wonders, still, about the lasting power of any story. (Something in me is feeling resistant to the idea. Not certain why.)