I have been reading Seymour Chatman's Story and Discourse, a dense narratologist text that deals with several aspects of narrative. What I am particularly interested in currently is the way stories are conveyed (i.e. told). That is, stories exist only as means of communicating. That communication didn't exist before I decided to tell it. For example, today I walked home. That certainly is a story. It conveys to you, the reader, that I, the subject, did something, walked home. Before I decided to tell you this story, though, it was just a series of random events that happened halfway across the globe from most of you, and down the street from the rest. The above italicized sentence does several things to those events: 1) it temporalizes them, placing the action squarely in today; 2) it gives them purpose; that is, the walk is no longer arbitrary, but from one point to a destination; 3) it relates the purpose to something that you, the reader, can empathize with: who hasn't walked home? Home is a great place, a place we would all like to be.
Chatman, though, likes to make the distinction between the point of view of the narrator and the point of view of the characters. Example 2: Seymour wrote his book while looking out the window at the sky. Here, there are two points-of-view: the first being the narrators, who sees Seymour writing his book; the second is that of Seymour, who sees the sky. Both the narrator and the character have different purposes: The narrator is looking to convey information to you, the reader, about Seymour; Seymour is looking to convey information to a fictional reader about...whatever the books turns out to be. For Chatman, as the example indicates, there needs to be a differentiation.
My claim is that the characters are part of the point-of-view of the narrator, and for all intents and purposes don't exist without the narrator narrating them into existence. Therefore, it could all be said to be part of one consciousness, or point-of-view. The narrator can see what Seymour sees (the sky, from the above example) and can see Seymour. The narrator can do this because all of it exists only in his mind, or better yet memory.
Archivist have recently begun to concede that their process, collecting and presenting artifacts, is a narrative act. This is a bold shift from previous ideologies which had archivists as the collectors of an anchored, objective past. An archive could be said to be close to or further from this fixed past. By conceding that an archive is just a story about the remembrances of a section of society, it dissociates itself from the belief in an objective history. Instead, archives, like all documents, are subjective narrations of what some remember as having happened. This would suggest, and what I find supports my argument, that there is no Master Story of history. What has happened is just the collective remembrances of those who happen to be in charge of remembering them.
Here's a fun game: at the end of a party, ask people what happened. No two stories will be the same. Taken as a collection, you will get an idea of what has happened, but certainly perspectives and interpretations are going to clash. So...which is the Master Story? Neither. Or both. A more extreme example: find a concentration camp survivor and prison guard. Ask each what happened during World War II. The two stories are going to be vastly different, but both is equally true. Clearly, memory is subjective, and thus history, archives and narratives.
Things cannot exist outside of the narrative. In this way, all major events of the past can only exist in the stories that we share about them. There are some versions that are going to be pretty well documented (by Ken Burns, more than likely), and some that are a little harder to believe. What happened, what we consider to be our reality, then, is just the most agreed upon perspective and interpretation of remembered actions.
Where am I going with this?
Right: all of that makes sense to me. I can see the points being made by both camps, I can wrap my head around the ideas, manipulate them, change them, make arguments for or against certain parts of it, and I can fabricate examples. This is dense, highly theoretical drivel, and I get it. Which leads me to my point.
While having tea today with my supervisor, I joking noted that the only part of my life that I understand, that makes sense to me, is my dissertation, which is about dense, theoretical approaches to understanding narrative forms. As I walked home, it started to be less funny, and ring more true.
Sometimes I have to remind myself of the reality of the situation:
1) I am 3000 miles away from what was comfortable.
2) Everything I know and love is on the other side of the planet (well, a quarter of the planet away).
3) I was very much in love with a woman, and engaged to be married, when, for some reason, things changed; now I am single. And confused.
4) My Grandma is no longer with us; despite believing that she would read the eulogy at my funeral, when I died at a ripe age, my Grandma passed away.
My Grandma passing has had more effect on me than I think I have let it. My Grandma gave my life context and meaning. She has always been there, but not only for me, for my parents as well. Because my Grandma was alive proved that my parents were, at one point, children. This goes a long way in helping young people understand that Mom and Dad are people - people who had lives, and mothers who cared for them, and loved and lost, etc. etc.
It's like the creation of a planet: it makes sense, to think about planets forming from space dust and gravity only if you can think about something having witnessed that thing. My Grandma witnessed the birthing of the planets that are my Aunts and Uncles. She contextualized who they have become by her very existence.
Now who is going to narrate my Aunts and Uncles into existence? Who is going to remember them past where I can...past where they can?
The street outside my apartment has had some work done on it this week. As streets go, this is a complex structure. I am fairly certain the land it's built on wasn't there before the road. The road was constructed above the ground, on relocated earth, and spans the width of the bay, or at least as fas as Aberystwyth cares to stretch it. As foundations go, sandy gravel is not the best, so the street has become a patchwork of plugged holes, and gaps stopped. One such hole was being repaired earlier in the week and a stop light system was brought in to smooth out traffic issues (as the road was reduced to one lane). When the light would change from red to green, the yellow light would flash on, then it would go green.
What an odd idea. I get the caution light: when going full speed, you'd like some warning before you have to stop. Going from movement to non-movement takes some time, and the yellow light is there to give you that time. But when going from nothing to something, you wouldn't think that you would need a warning. But there it was: a beware, you might have to do something light.
In retrospect, I would like to have just that sort of light installed in my room. This way, when things are about to get confusing, and my life is about to take a shift in some random, unforeseen direction, I can get a little bit of warning. That way, regardless of whether I am doing something or not, I can know that change is about to occur.
In the end, that's probably what we could all use.
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