Story is a concept that mankind seems to have employed from the beginnings of his communications. Story tells of what is, what was, what might be, and sometimes it tells of what never was, but perhaps what could have been, or what ought to have been.
Every culture has story at its core. We tell of our founding fathers — not just Americans who revel in the honesty of a George Washington who cannot tell a lie or a young Benjamin Franklin who walks down the streets of Philadelphia shamelessly munching on a loaf of bread, but all cultures have stories of their forebearers of how noble they were, of what wonderful things they did, and of the debt we, their descendants, owe to them for the wonderful lives we have today because of the sacrifices they boldly made on our behalf.
It is appropriate to speak of story, particularly today, the day after Veterans’ Day, where we, in America, have said our thanks to those who served in our military to preserve our freedoms.
Story, as I mentioned above, can be completely realistic, or wildly fantastic and imaginary. Story communicates truth, but not always realism.
Let me give an example. Yesterday my younger son at the Naval Academy emailed me with an article he had to summarize for his English class. It was an article that basically ‘debunked’ the story of Oedipus Rex, saying that the way Sophocles reported the story the time line did not work.
Just to review the myth, Oedipus was fated to slay his father and marry his mother. In order to avoid that, his biological parents decided to leave him exposed to die on a mountain side, but a shepherd found him, and gave him to another couple. As Oedipus hears of his fate, he decides to leave the people he thinks to be his parents. He ends up where his biological parents live, and does everything the prophecy says he will do.
Now, the author of the article basically says that the timeline does not work, so the realism of the work is called into question. Because the realism of the work is called into question, this author more or less dismisses the work.
But that treatment of the work is a modern treatment, a treatment that says, let’s look at the facts like a scientist or a court of law would look at the facts. Why did the messenger report the murder so late? Or was the throne at Thebes empty when Laius had just left? Or the sphinx according to the time line had only been there two days, but if the sphinx had plagued the kingdom enough for people to offer the kingdom to the person who could solve the riddle, it must have been a plague for a long time, … etc.
Those are fine questions for courtroom battles or modern mysteries or scientific investigations, but those were not the questions the ancients would have asked, nor are those questions the point of Story, per se.
Take Jesus, for example, and his telling of parables. In the story of the good Samaritan, are we to go to the roads between Jerusalem and Jericho and investigate whether the road was wide enough that if a wounded man lay on one side of the road, it would be possible for a man to avoid him and go on the other side of the road. Are we to make sure that two denarii is enough pay for the inkeeper to keep the wounded man for several days? No, the point of the story is that one man was a real neighbor to a stranger he found on the road. The man was in need and the Samaritan found him, cared for him, and even provided for him for several days. In contrast, other people who could have helped chose to look the other way. Perhaps they were busy, perhaps they had helped in the past and been swindled, perhaps they were afraid to get involved. We do not know, but what we do know is that this Samaritan, according to the story, helped.
If this parable was told today by Jesus, perhaps instead of a Samaritan, he would have told us Christians that it was a devout Muslim man — just to make the point that our humanity does not stem from our culture or our specific convictions, but from the goodness and compassion that overflows from our hearts, I don’t know. The point to the Jews was that a Samaritan, a person the Jews despised because of his culture, was the person who had the compassion to help a man who would otherwise have been left at the side of the road to die.
Are we to ask Jesus if there really WAS a Samaritan, or if there really WAS a man who got mugged and left for dead? No, we don’t need to, because these things happen in human society all the time. People get hurt, some don’t care, others help.
Back to Oedipus Rex: This complex story does have some issues in its time line (the writer had a point there), but those are issues that are not essential to the story. The story is about how people try to avoid their fate and end up fulfilling it. It is about how we human beings are so blind to who we really are, while we see the flaws of others so clearly. It is about the pain of discovering who we really are, and about one man’s attempts to cope with the reality of what he is, versus what he thought he was. It is a story wrought with honesty and pain. And that happens to us all, if we have the courage to pursue the truth.
Now onto Story as I wrap up this part of Story. We tell stories to our students, or we read stories that others have told or written to them to convey truth about life, truth about our culture, truth about what it means to be a human being. Story does not preach… OK, I take that back some stories do. — Let me put it this way, a good story does not need to wag fingers or preach. It SHOWS (just like a good essay should do). Nobody likes to be preached at, not adults, not children. The genius of persons like Jesus telling parables, is that the moral of the story comes out to the listener without him feeling attacked or preached at. He hears, his mind makes the connections on its own, and because he is making his own connections he is more receptive to the message of the story, than if he had been preached at.
Story doesn’t just tell little morals about how we ought to be and what we need to not do, if that was all it did (even if it did it indirectly, story would indirectly preach). Story leaves us to marvel at the world, it opens up to us the wonder of what is out there, the creatures, the vastness, the beauty, the wonderful acts that we can engage in, as well as the horrible deeds mankind has committed over time. Story has the power to engulf us and let us experience those acts. It then also has the power to leave us alone to ponder the acts and forge our own actions in our own lives in reponse to what story gently instructed us about.
More about Story and its power in education in the next blog.