Blog 11

The idea that stories shape who you are really resonates with me. I think that they are used to teach meaningful lessons, as well as harsh realities, like in Drew and Ali’s interview with Ali’s father. His father talked about a story that he had heard from his father, and that he told his kids when they were growing up. The story is about a king and his son, and how his sons friends weren’t good friends. They did an experiment where they told everyone that they were going to put the son to death. When the friends came to the king, they said that he shouldn’t put the son to death, but didn’t offer anything they owned to save him. When the king then tested his friends, and they found that they would give their first born sons and one would give his life for him. This story shows the true importance in friendship and stories in helping understand life. The idea that narratives can clarify life for us is huge in Julia Becks piece “Life’s Stories”, “ultimately, the only material we’ve ever had to make stories out of is our own imagination, and life itself. Storytelling, then—fictional or nonfictional, realistic or embellished with dragons—is a way of making sense of the world around us.” This idea that there is life and a sort of truth behind fictional stories, even fairy tales, is giving a whole new perspective to the idea that our lives, in one way or another, are stories.