I have a great story to tell you. It’s about how evil came into the world. One day, ages and ages ago, a group got together, of 4 of life’s children (not figuratively, but literally. Life gave birth to four of them and they all came out a little wonky). Every night, they got together and drew from a lottery the name of one person whose life they would try and ruin. So on this night, they drew the name of a woman, and after passing it around for a while, and thinking long and hard, they started talking about the worst possible things that they could come up with.
The first, War, cried out, “I’m going to blow through her country and destroy every place she’s ever loved.”
This plan received several nods of approval. But of course, Poverty being poverty, not waiting for the right time or place, cut in saying, “that’s nothing. Once she flees her land, I’m going to take away everything she owns, and make her struggle to support her family until the day she dies.”
Divorce clapped her hands gleefully, knowing where there was poverty, she was sure to follow. Impatiently, she yelled out “and then I’ll rip their family apart and they’ll scatter into different homes and different cities!”
“Think of the children”, cooed Insanity.
“Why? You never do”, Divorce shot back.
“You’re right”, chuckled Insanity. I guess after you’re done with her, it’s my turn. I’ll tear through her mind and leave her traumatized from everything you heartless things have done to her. But of course you know I’m the worst, so I’ll throw in some depression, and when her kids have reached their own end, my grand finale will be Schizophrenia.”
“Harsh, but I think we have our winner” Poverty and War chimed.
“At least she’ll have something to write home about. Or at least enough to write a memoir about”, Divorce threw out.
As they were all getting their coats on and getting ready to leave, in walked Life’s last child. After all, she always undoubtedly showed up at the end.
“Sit down”, she said.
Here’s what I’m going to do. War, after you’ve taken her security, and after Poverty has stripped her of her possessions (a little weak if you ask me), Divorce will come in, as always. Is no one else getting bored of the same repetitive things happening to these silly people? At least Insanity will spice things up with the shear chaos of depression and schizophrenia.
And here is where I come in. After all of this, I’m going to convince this woman that nobody is going to believe her; that nobody cares. She’ll stop telling her stories. She’ll think that people have stopped listening. And then she should be as good as dead, because we all know we are our stories.
“That’s dark”, whispered Insanity.
“Brilliant”, said War.
But it can’t happen, they all agreed. You can do whatever you like to someone, but you can’t take away their truth, and their stories.
We can get along without that kind of thing. Take it back. Call that story back, they all said.
Doubt coyly smiled and shrugged, knowing it was too late.
For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world.
The story I decided to tell was one that helped me sort through my own truth in a way. Edward Chamberlain, in the previous novel that we studied “If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?” suggests that
“We hold to stories and songs that chronicle the things we dread
precisely because they provide us with some sense of order.”
While the story I told of my mother’s life and the introduction of evil to it, as I have seen it, may be different from the one she would tell, it is still a true story in the sense that it is my truth. It converges the reality of imagination, where the facts of my experience are balanced with the formalities of my expression (222).
Which brings up the question of why, when having to tell a story, I turned to my own life experiences to explain something as seemingly universal as “evil”? Here is where Thomas King’s idea, in his narrative “The Truth About Stories”, rings true for me. King claims that “the truth about stories is that that’s all we are” (2), helping justify my immediate reaction to explain an idea through personal experience because experience is all I have to reach in to.
King asks the question, “do the stories we tell reflect the world as it truly is […]?” (26), but for me, the question becomes: do the stories we tell reflect ourselves as we truly are? Can we as individuals, or as a nation, create and recreate our identities however we see fit?
Works Cited
Chamberlain, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?. Toronto: Random House. 2004. Print.
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.
I think that your last couple questions is really interesting given our assignment of having to retell the story. For me, I’ve always considered art a construction, regardless of how much “truth” the artist uses in his work. It’s a conscious act. But I think that this assignment was meant to hammer that concept home; that even if we are consciously changing the story, we can still deliver a similar message. I think that maybe the cultures that don’t value oral communication as much as written see this construction as an opponent to “truth”, rather than just a complement to it.
I agree that a message can be there even as we change the story itself, but what if that story is all that identifies you? I don’t think King is looking at stories as an art form to express ourselves. I think he heavily places our identities on stories, which means, in some way, there has to be some level of criteria for what we can call truth and what we can take and make our own. Maybe there doesn’t “have to” be any criteria, maybe that’s my western need to make sure everything fits pretty in a box.
Post Secret is a community site where people have been sending in their secrets for years on the back of a postcard and Frank Warren (the project coordinator) files through them and posts them online (if you haven’t looked at this site, check it out!). Some of the secrets are really silly. A lot of people admit they pee in the shower. And some of them are a lot heavier, dealing with cheating, rape, murder and anything you can imagine would be someone’s secret. Frank’s been asked a lot whether or not he believes all of the secrets are “true”, and how this might change the project. He’s always responded similarly to what you have Michael, where he believes truth and storytelling are an art form that may not necessarily reveal the reality of the situation, but they contain some form of truth, because they reveal other aspects.
I agree, yet, it’s still hard to wrap my mind around the idea that we have the right to tell anything as we see fit. It seems dangerous, and while there is definitely merit in art expression, doesn’t reality get a fair chance in art expression as well?
I really liked your twist on the story, and your thought-provoking questions at the end. I think our stories represent how we’d like others to think we really are. Is there really a singular, platonic conception of who
‘we’ are? This solid identity never really exists, its shifting shape from second to second as people change their stories and experience new things and forget others.
I’ve always enjoyed stories with personified characters – you got me at “Every night, they got together and drew from a lottery the name of one person whose life they would try and ruin.” It’s interesting that you chose “Doubt” as the worst of the bunch; if someone asked me to list life-ruining causes/events, I wouldn’t have thought to put “doubt” on my list, but it truly is an overlooked and underestimated “evil”.
I agree with Preet: identities are anything but static, which is why we don’t have one story, but several. Our perception shapes our identity, and vice versa. There are so many facets to each and every one of us, so many potential stories, that I think they all reflect some aspect of ourselves. Stories are the embodiment of experiences (just like this story) and as we develop, our stories transform as well. In other words, yes, we can create and recreate our identities because we have the agency to do so, because our stories need to “fit” us as we change.
Thanks for a great read.
I like that. I like the idea that we all have potential because of our different facets. I see what the two of you mean.
I guess what the troubling part for me is that beyond “personal stories”–I guess anything encompassing personal experience, if we are to consider King and Chamberlain’s claims that everything in life is a story, the stories that are told, whether it be for med school, or for an insurance claim, cannot just be our own personal truths. Society has an expectation that there will be a greater level of reality within them. The idea that we can all create and recreate our identities and truths is fine on an individual level, but what happens when other people’s truths are at stake? As an example, the Judeo-Christian stories were told, with I’m sure, as much vigor and passion, and belief that they were true. But the consequences of so many people (including Canada’s early colonizers) accepting this truth, was that it over-shadowed any alternative beliefs, such as those of the indigenous people. And now, hundreds of years later, certain beliefs have been marginalized in order to make room for those mainstream beliefs.
I’d love to hear what you think!
I think your last questions leave a lot to think about. I personally believe that we are free agents of our own stories, and locations – to an extent. Some people will travel and find a place which speaks to them – inspiring them to move and adopt another culture. Some people will find that their own sex biology doesn’t reflect their own story, so they adopt another sex. And some people will “fake it till [they] make it”. But, IMO, most people’s identity comes from their own location (sex, race, ethnicity, ability, religion, gender, socio-economic status, class), and most people don’t see these identity traits as being changeable. Donna Haraway – a post-structuralist feminist – argues in her book that people are hybrid beings, and never complete or whole – that our identities are always and constantly “under construction”.
🙂 thank you!