Life As Narrative
In this essay I am going to be
looking at a ‘Thought’. A ‘Thought’ that
is quite different from the form of reasoning; the form of thought that focuses
on the recollection of personal Experiences rather than the actual sequence of
events. I want to explore the idea of narrative theories in conjunction to the
stories we tell about our lives; our “Autobiography”. I will be referring to a
number of narrative theories, who’s research built the foundation on which our
stories lay.; Vladimir Propp who’s classic analysis of folktale reveals, the form of a folktale may
remain unchanged even though its content changes (Propp 2010). So, too,
self-told life narrative may reveal a common formal structure across a wide
variety of content.
Let me begin by sketching the general
shape of the argument I wish to explore.
The first thesis convey that we seem to have no other way of depicting
“lived time” than saving it in the form of an internal narrative. Now I am not
saying that there is no other temporal form that can be imposed on the
experience of time. But none of them succeeds in capturing the sense of
“physical time”. no clock or calendrical time form, no serial or cyclical
Orders, not any of these; this thesis is powerfully argued by Paul Riceour
(Ricœur et al., 1984).
Even if we set down annals in bare
form of events (White, 1980), they will be seen to be events chosen, with a
view to the place in an implicit narrative. This is evidence in the graphic
novel “Embroideries” in which the author tells her life’s story through the
story of others, this then shapes the cultural cognitive and linguistic process
that guides her story. The power, which structures perceptual experience, to
organise memories, to segment and purposely-build the very “event” of her life.
In the end she became the “autobiographical narrative by which she “tells
about” her life. And given the cultural shaping in which she refers to as “In
Iran, if one has the means, one must invite at least 300 people” (Satrapi,
2008, pp. 43 – 43), which then become the result of the culture’s sanctioned
form. By then addressing the “development of autobiography”, and how our ways
of telling about ourselves changes each time; how these accounts then come to
take control of our way of life.
Figure
1-
This is also evident in my own
“self-telling” as the more I want to tell my story the more of a novelty it
becomes. Of course the telling of one’s life is a privilege, but yet a troubled
one as I began to sense that it is intrusive: myself and the central figure in
the narrative are the same. This invasion then creates dilemmas. As stated by
Vladimir Propp, “the form of a folktale may remain unchanged even though its
content changes”(Propp
2010), I find my autobiography took the opposite direction from the one of
Propp. As the form of my story remained unchanged, while the content changed. I
believe this happened because I find it difficult to tell the correct story as
I didn’t want to give too much away, this meant I had to keep changing and
morphing my story for it to make a better narrative
The critic Paul de Man speaks of “defacement” imposed to turning around on oneself to
Create, as it put it, “a monument” (de Man,
1986, pp. 84 – 84). Another critic comment on the autobiographical narrator’s
irresistible error on accounting for his act in terms of intentions when, they
might have in fact be quite determined. This then begins to create massive
Problems, just like in my life’s story these problems are beyond verification,
meaning the very telling of the self-story distort what we have in mind to
tell.
Figure
2-
Andrzej
Klimowski, spread from
Horace Dorlan, Faber & Faber, 2007
Andrzej Klimowski play with text and
imagery in long-winded way to create a sense of familiarity by repeating and
earlier passage later on as a visual sequence. This is a technique I have
attempted in order to adapt to my stop-motion narrative, by introducing a
sequence early on, then reintroducing that same sequence in a different form
later creates a coherent and free flowing narrative. This has helped me understand
a more strategical way of constructing a conceptually pleasing visual sequence.
Although the events are familiar, one
hasn’t seen it before, this then introduces an element of doubt as the sequence
is retraced to establish exactly what happened- and why it has been repeated.
As Stephanie Black states in her Rear View Mirror essay; “the sequences end in
the central character suffering an accident on the stairs, with the visual
account culminating in his crashing out of the rigid boundaries of the lino-cut
images and, in full-bleed, falling out of the picture, in parallel to the
events that occurred in writing near the start of the book” (Black, 2008).
This level of conceptual sequence Placement
is something I have attempted to achieve in my own narrative, the journey one
creates to conduct the viewer's eye in which ever different one may desire, and
having an in-depth understanding of how one use of material might impact the
message being conveyed in the final realization of a sequence. This intersects
with the theory of Vladimir Propp, in which he states “the form of a folktale may remain
unchanged even though its content changes” (Propp 2010). in correspondence with
the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, I believe her “life’s telling” would not
have been as “Funny, free-thinking and sexy” (The Guardian and Freely, 2016),
if the content of the story was an exact representation of what had happened.
This then reinforces my argument, by shinning the light on the fact that, one
“life’s telling” might not necessarily be an exact account of the previous
events that occurred.
Figure 3
My second
thesis is that the parody between “life’s telling” and narrative, is a two-way
affair. Narrative imitates life, life imitates narrative. “Life” in this sense
is the same kind of construction of human imagination as “a narrative”. it is
constructed by us through active discussions, by the same kind of discussions
through which we construct narratives. When someone tells you their life’s story,
and that is mainly what I will be talking about- it is always an intellectual
achievement rather than a crystal clear recital of something precisely given.
In the end, it is a narrative Achievement.
Tzvetan
Todorov believed all narratives follow a three-part structure, where they begin
with a state of Equilibrium, in which life is normal and happy. This state of
normality is then disrupted by and outside force, which has to be fought
against in order to return to a state of Equilibrium. This theory is illustrated
in the novel/movie “Me Earl and the Dying Girl” written Jesse Andrews (Andrews,
2012). An example of equilibrium is that the main character Greg Gaines who is
the last master of high school espionage, able to disappear at will into any
social environment, only had one friend Earl, and together they spend their
time making movies. This fun is then Disrupted when Greg’s mum forces him to be
friends with Rachel who has just been diagnosed with Leukemia. The recognition
of disruption is then displayed when Greg realise how much he’s grown fond of
Rachel, and Rachel then decides to stop having treatments. He and Earl then
attempt repairing the disruption by making her a film, which turns into the
worst film ever made and becomes the turning point in each of their lives. And
all at once Greg must abandon invisibility and stand in the spotlight. This in
one way or the other restored the state of Equilibrium.
Figure 4
In
correspondence to my thesis, this novel is an absolute beauty, however I
believe this could not have been an exact crystal clear account of the events
that occurred. The author constructed parts of this story to illustrate an
attractively well polished narrative, by the same construction in which the
story imitates her life. In my opinion, this just goes to show this story
wouldn’t have been humorous, emotional or spellbinding if some of it wasn’t
made up. I must then admit, for I have been confronted by these decisions in my
own story, the desire to construct a good story made me create other stories
that where never there, therefore giving the content of my story a better
structure. For example, my fathers character in the beginning is illustrated as
being dead and the “black” hand (death), as taken away he’s spirit and is now
taking off his glasses. This account never occurred and one, I never saw the
hand; two, I do not remember being in the room when he was pronounced dead.
This is then to say, playing with one’s imagination to create visual metaphors,
and playing with stories told to me by my mother allowed me to create a much
more powerful sequence than the one I remember.
Images by me
I want to conclude with on last point,
for I have lingered long enough into my subject. Jean- Paul Sartre remarks in
his autobiography, “a man is always a teller of stories, he lives surrounded by
his own stories, and those of other people, he sees everything that happens to
him in terms of these stories and he tries to live his life as if he were
recounting it” (Sartre and Sartre, 1982). His point is a telling of one life
stories must tangle within the area of life stories; the tellers and the listeners
must share some deep “understanding” of the nature of an autobiography, for if
the rules of “autobiographies” are altogether inconsistent, the tellers and the
listeners will surely be joined by a failure to understand what the other is
saying, or what he thinks the other is hearing. This then shows my opinion
toward autobiographical narratives is a bias one, for I fell in certain areas a
form in which one life’s story is constructed might be the best way of that
particular story could have been told; on the other hand, I believe in other
cases an autobiographical story might not necessarily be the best or true
manner in which story should be illustrated.
For I also believe if one is to tag their story as an “autobiography”,
it should be a true and honest recital of the events occurred.
Doing this project as taught me one
indisputable lesson, the mind is never free of commitment. there is no innocent
eye, the eye sees everything, is then up to the mind to remember it. There is
instead thesis, versions, expected scenarios. Our understanding of the nature
of a life is that is a story, some narrative however ambiguously put together.
Perhaps I can also say, any story one may tell about anything is better
understood by considering other ways in which it can be told. That must surely
be as true of the life stories we tell as of any others. I would like to
continue my research in the understanding of “life as narrative” as I feel is
one that has a number of avenues, I would then like to compare the
autobiographical form of story telling to other forms of story telling.
Bibliography
Andrews, J. (2012) Me and
earl and the dying girl: A novel. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Black, S. (2008) Varoom.
Available at: http://www.varoom-mag.com/?p=1517 (Accessed: 4 February 2016).
De Man, P. (1986) The
rhetoric of romanticism. 2nd edn. Irvington, NY: Colombia University Press.
Propp, V. (2010) Morphology
of the Folktale: Second edition, revised and edited with preface by louis A.
Wagner, introduction by Alan Dundes. Edited by Louis A Wagner. United
States: University of Texas Press.
Ricœur, P., Ricoeur, P., McLaughlin,
K. and Pellauer, D. (1984) Time and narrative: V. 1. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1984-.
Sartre, J.-P. and Sartre, J.-P.
(1982) L’Imaginaire: La Psychologie Phnomenologique de l'imagination (the
imaginary: The Phenomenol.. Paris: Editions Flammarion.
Satrapi, M. (2008) Embroideries.
United Kingdom: Jonathan Cape.
The Guardian and Freely, M.
(2016) Tea and adversity. Available at:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jun/25/comics (Accessed: 5 February
2016).
White, H. (1980) ‘The value of
Narrativity in the representation of reality’, Critical Inquiry, 7(1),
p. 5. doi: 10.1086/448086.
Citations, Quotes &
Annotations
De Man, P. (1986) The
rhetoric of romanticism. 2nd edn. Irvington, NY: Colombia University
Press."“defacement” imposed to turning around on oneself to Create a
"monument"" (de Man, 1986, pp. 84 – 84)
Satrapi, M. (2008) Embroideries.
United Kingdom: Jonathan Cape. "In Iran, if one has the means, one must
invite at least 300 people" [Satrapi, 2008, pp. 43 – 43]
FIGURES
Figure 1 Satrapi,
M. (2008) Embroideries. United Kingdom: Jonathan Cape.[p43]
Figure 2 http://www.varoom-mag.com/?p=1517
(Accessed: 4 February 2016).
Figure 3 Satrapi,
M. (2008) Embroideries. United Kingdom: Jonathan Cape. [p70-71]
Figure 4 Andrews, J. (2012) Me and earl and
the dying girl: A novel. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
