My Grandpa used to own a carpet store in Winnipeg. He used to refer to himself as the “Carpet King of the North.” During his promotional days in the 80s, he would unroll a 112 foot red carpet from the sidewalk on Maclean Avenue and right into a giant, regal chair in his store. When I was a young fat, child, he used to tell me that within all of us are two people. One is a devil figure who makes you selfish, angry and critical. The other is the one who wants to connect with people and make the world a better place. He would have called this “God’s” will. I will quickly speak with the voice of the Devil’s will and then I will speak with God’s Will and then go back to the Devil’s will again.
Devil’s will: Unsworth begins his article with, ” …J.k. Rowling’s Harry Potter books confirms the enduring capacity of literary narratives to engage the enthusiasm of young people in the 21st Century.” (62) Why Harry Potter? Why do we need to sell narratives with Harry Potter? I would like to believe that I spent a good part of my life reading because narratives speak to us as people and we are hard wired through our DNA to learn through narratives. I read because I want to know more about the world and myself. Is Harry Potter the best confirmation of our interest in narratives this century? When we justify the importance of books through some potboiler fantasy, it retards our understanding of our relationship with narratives.
Everything we know is a narrative. The Big Bang theory, Evolution, Jesus, Mohammed, The Big Crunch, Terry Fox’s run across the country, Santa on Christmas eve, Joan of Arc, The Grand narrative, Odysseus, Bathsheba, Hitler’s Death, the construction of the Great Wall. These are all stories. And we are all stories. We all tell our stories to ourselves and others. We defend ourselves in court through stories, we pay 200 dollars an hour to tell our stories to our shrinks, we tell stories at our funerals, weddings and anniversaries. Stories make up who we are. Sales people and marketers pitch us with sad or happy stories; most video games contain a beginning and an end. We listen to the humble stories of our beloved politicians. We paint stories. We sing stories in our music. We tell our children bed time stories. What is Facebook if not a story? No Unsworth, what confirms the enduring capacity of literary narratives to engage the enthusiasm of young people isn’t Harry Potter. What confirms this capacity is pretty much every discipline, hobby, interaction and branch of knowledge we study today – not Harry Potter.
God’s Will: Unsworth does a great job in his analysis of how e-literature has the potential to enrich our experiences with stories. I like how he outlines the potential experiences of reading a book and its resources online. Because we read, listen to and tell stories in multiple different forms everyday, I found it very interesting to read Unsworth’s delineation of our experiences in stories.
Because I want to get some of these aspects into my long term memory, I want to record and comment on these experiences.
1.) Story/Genesis:
We all wonder about the beginning of a story. Where did it come from. When did it start? After all, the story of Genesis is probably the best selling narrative in the world’s history. In an online platform, I think students could really access this quicker than the traditional “About the Author” at the end of a book. It’s quick access and immediate hook. The more we know and can relate to a story, the more engaged most of us will be.
2.) Invitation
Access and sampling. Marketers have been using this to sell for years. Why else would Janga? be popular? How about Dominoes? Seriously. Somewhere, sometime people were deliberately invited to these games. These invitations created relationships with these games. Kids deserve stories for the sake of stories. We all need an invitation to a good thing. This medium is fast and easy.
3.) Appreciation/Celebration
This is so important. By celebrating stories, we celebrate ourselves. Online forums and communities will never replace the connections we need as human beings. But whatever. Celebration is usually a good thing.
4.) Interpretation and Response
This is useful for students who are always online searching for information online. In my experience, students on the internet have multiple windows open at once. To have them interpreting and responding consciously to complex narratives will only help them to interpret and respond to spam and harmful information in a more skillful way. This is good.
5.) Adjunct Creation/Composition
This is why I love the internet and dislike television. Taking an active role in the composition of our narratives is not only empowering, but just plain interesting. The more we invite each other to create our own stories, the more we invite each other to connect to our strengths and preferences and work through and update our own stories.
In the end, this article got me thinking about my own stories and the stories of my students. And the more stories we know, the smarter we are considered to be. Thank you for making me Smarter, Unsworth. I’ll take all the stories I can get.
-Brian Boyce
Works Cited
Unsworth, Len. (2008). Multiliteracies, E-literature and English Teaching, Language and Education, 22:1, 62-75.