The Power of Stories. Part One.

What Are Stories?

Humans have a deep and fundamental desire to tell and to hear stories. From ancient mythologies to multi-million dollar blockbusters, stories have shaped every human life since before recorded history. They have the capacity to move us in ways we do not fully understand, and more deeply than we could ever explain. The ubiquity of stories raises a wealth of fascinating questions. What is it about this fanciful, non-scientific use of words that has the power to stir us so profoundly and universally? And what about this art is so deeply rooted in our nature, that it is, apparently, inseparably linked to what it means to be a human person?

These are enormous questions, so let's start with a simpler one. What are stories?

The material of a story is an imitation of particular events or actions. The author uses words to create, in the imagination of his readers or listeners, images of the fabricated events or human actions that will make up his story. In creating these actions, he must also create believable characters to perform these actions, as well as a context and backdrop, a fabric of history and situations in which to put the characters and their actions. The character developments and intertwining plots of War and Peace, for instance, are made out of a series of particular human actions and set against a backdrop of Russian culture.

This collection of human actions that make up the material of the story must be unified, given a form, if it is to make up a single story.

The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of the action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. (Poetics, Aristotle)

This unity comes about by the plot which is the introduction, development and resolution of a conflict. When a story begins, one usually finds the hero in a state of normality that just has been or is just about to be broken or interrupted. This state is not necessarily one of innocence or peace but will be so in contrast to the bulk of the story, as the cooperation of Achilles with the Greeks is a state of peace only when compared to his wrath that lasts through most of the plot. “Peace” is taken broadly and might be something like a stalemate to which a conflict will be a relief. For example, in the 1938 film Holiday, the heroine has felt trapped for years in her posh family’s society life and the entrance of the unconventional hero turns things upside down, thereby setting her free. “Innocence”, too, is not always a positive thing and conflict with it may be a necessary and positive maturation process. This is the state of Emma in Jane Austen’s novel. The “perfect” conditions of her little world are keeping her from maturity and it is only when things begin to go against her way that she can become a woman “faultless in spite of her faults”.

I take conflict very broadly, to encompass anything that provides a challenge which the character or characters must overcome, be it external or internal, composite or simple, minor or major. The easily identified conflict of a fairy tale is no more of a conflict than the composite and subtler struggles of a maturation story. Conflicts can have multiple layers and near infinite variety and are the driving force of the story. While the resolution is the more lasting and satisfying element, the conflict is that which brings the plot into being.

Though the resolution can also take on a wide variety of forms, it can normally be categorized as a happy ending or a sad ending, which in most stories will involve some mixture with the other ending. “To say that stories either have happy or unhappy endings may seem such a commonplace that one almost hesitates to utter it. But it has to be said, simply because it is the most important single thing to be observed about stories.”[The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker] Christopher Booker characterizes the distinction thus, “The plot of a story is that which leads its hero or heroine either to a ‘catastrophe’ or an ‘unknotting’; either to frustration or to liberation; either to death or to a renewal of life.” A happy ending is one which resolves the conflict in favor of the hero, an unhappy ending does the reverse. Most stories that are trying to realistically portray human nature as we experience it will conclude with endings that are mixed. Nevertheless, they are still generally categorized as either happy or sad. What we call a happy ending, achieved through struggle and suffering will not be completely devoid of this suffering, even in resolution. Whether it be by some loss that came about during the struggle, the awareness that suffering cannot be completely out of the picture or by some other way, a realistic happy ending will usually have a hint of the bittersweet, even faintly. The overall tone, however, will be one of hope or joy, even if it is in the midst of darkness and the conflict will have been resolved essentially in favor of the hero. On the flipside, sad endings are also never entirely devoid of a note of hope. But the conflict will have resolved in such a way as to affect the hero negatively.

So far we've talked about a very basic definition of a story - defined its matter and its form. We've said that stories are built out of words which narrate a series of particular events. These events are unified by the plot which is the introduction, development and resolution of the conflict. The resolution will normally be characterized as happy or unhappy, but will technically be somewhere on the spectrum between the two.

Next we'll discuss stories as we more immediately experience them: their profound emotional power, their unique capability to unify separate parts of experience, the knowledge they can convey and their portrayal of human nature.

#Stories