The Use of Narratives to Create the Human Experience - Essay Example

The use of narratives to create the human experience Narrative is the way in which a story unfolds, the experiences of the characters brought to life through revelation. According to Polkinghorne, the narrative of an experience is organized hermeneutically and reproduced according to the figures of linguistic production.1 The narrative creates a larger understanding of the human experience, widening the depth in which those experiences are related. The origin of narrative is in the capacity for human beings to indulge in storytelling. It may be that the origin of culture might be tied to the ability to create narrative, to link the stories of the past to the present and create history. Creating narrative is the ability to create different universes, to bring to life worlds that have passed or never existed. According to Niles “Only human beings possess this almost incredible cosmoplastic power or world-making capability”.2 This makes human beings decidedly more interesting. In creating different worlds, in carrying forward history, and in providing insight in to the self, the human being has created a method for expanding his or her own experience and extending his life beyond that of existence. The power to create a story is the power to exist long after death. Through comparing the novels Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe and Clarissa by Samuel Richardson, the narrative can be examined for the ways in which it reveals human experience. The first person type of narrative provides for a variety of emotional context that is not always available to the third person form of narrative. Although Moll Flanders is not told from an over emotional point of view, it does provide her reflections on how she experienced the actions of others. This less emotional point of view might be reflective of the female criminals that Defoe had the experience to talk to within his life. In Clarissa, there is a distinct opportunity to see into her emotional life, her narrative having the texture of “writing from the heart”, the recitation providing for “the elaborate and perplexing interplay of confession, casuistry, apology, and dissembling”.3 In the eighteenth century, history and story were yoked together in order to form realistic fiction that told stories that could have exited within the real world. The novel was a recreation of life, growing from the story into an organic whole that was the illusion of life. Defoe understood the context of the constructed reality, his own sense of his narrative influenced by knowing the illusion that he created. According to Sen, the eighteenth century population craved two types of novels: racy novels that entertained through sexuality, violence, and criminality or commentaries on morality. The types of novels in demand were primarily driven by the young, the underclass, and women. Defoe attempted to create a new type of fiction, weeding through the standards in order to provide something original.4 One of the first arguments made by Defoe was between the preface and the narrator, stating that the preface should be given by someone other than the narrator. He equated this as the difference between the critic and the creative writer. Sen states that through the preface, Defoe opens the seminal issue of truth within the narrative.5 Through this belief, Defoe situates his novels as being neither truth nor fiction, existing within a realm that is in between. Therefore, although the actual truth of the story is unknown, it is based within the reality of the time period. It is known that Defoe had access to some of the worst female criminals of the period. He frequented the prison to visit a friend during this time and therefore could take stories he heard within the walls of incarceration in order to create his own world. It is most probable that Moll Flanders is a composite character that embodies his interactions with these female criminals.6 Defoe writes that much of what he writes leaves out some of the more horrid events and some is shortened, leaving the reader to decide what is true and what is not true. He states, “To this purpose some of the vicious parts of her life, which could not be modestly told, is quite left out, and several other parts are very much shortened”.7 Therefore, the truth of the novel is left to the imagination of the reader, whether it is true, could be partially true, or is completely fiction in which a story that reflects the truth is written. The truth of the narrative is unknown, then, the history as yet not traced back to a single experience.8 However, the nature of the narrative suggests to the reader that the story is true, creating the concept that it is narrated in such a way as to have come from those who experienced the events. Told from the first person, the events are related as if they are experienced, the movement from one event to the next dictated by the exposure to the event that the narrator authentically experienced or has knowledge. According to Prince, this is a first person situation narrative in which the narrator is a participant in the events.9 According to Butte, initially, the narrative can be seen through the concept that Moll observes others as they move across “the screen of her perception”.10 She is the agent of the narrative, but her perception is deeper than merely experiencing the events. Her apparent simple intersubjectivity is not as simple as it might seem her position within the narrative requiring that she become representative and provide rhetoric within the politics of the events.11 The book Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson is an organized labyrinth, the dialogue a running monologue from Clarissa who is never far from the action of the story. However, Clarissa is genuinely dialogic in its form, using the responses from Anna within her letters as a way in which to comment on the things that happen in Clarissa’s life as well as on her feeling about what has happened. In this way, Richardson is innovative, creating dialogue within a first person narrative that has the ability to create a different point of view.12 Through the use of the letters, Richardson creates a parallel, a way of relating the events from two points of view without breaking his original concept in narration. Clarissa is created and recreated, her versions of her self are constantly challenged and provided.13 Koehler describes the narrative as the internal parasitic model, the first person aspect infiltrated by the insertion of letters and so forth that reveal to Clarissa what she would not normally be privy to understanding. As well, the reader becomes a conspirator as letters that have yet to enter Clarissa’s consciousness are revealed, thus creating a duality in the way in which he letters affect the narrative.14 The duality of the narrative creates a complexity that is both intriguing and compelling. The way in which the narrative is a triangular pattern suggests to the reader that there are more narratives beyond the scope of the novel, that the stories outside of the letters is as compelling as the one told within them. Koehler describes this as “a kind of excessive narrative potential implied in each of these little ‘knots’ of communication: the reader gets the sense that equal attention paid to all of the different sides of the story could lead to other narratives”.15 An example of this can be found through wondering about the history of why Arabella feels the way that she does about Clarissa. The theme of frustrated desire, a common theme for the time period in which it was written, are present within the narrative as well. According to Koehler, Prince calls this the ‘disnarrated’. These are the events that do not happen but are still within the narration.16 These events can be considered counterfactuals, events that could have happened but didn’t or are within the framework of the hypothetical.17 Through the use of the disnarrated, the reader can create commentary on what has happened through the perspective of what could have happened or what might happen. These events add texture to the human experience, suggesting that the individual experience is layered with aspects of hope and expectations. The first person narrative creates an opportunity for the reader to inject his or her own thoughts into the story, the reasons for different actions not revealed by the narration, thus leaving this open to the reader to postulate. The use of the letters in Clarissa allow for a great deal of open space in which the reader can fill in supposition, allowing the reader to actively participate in the narration. The less emotional recitation from Moll Flanders allows the same kind of postulating, the reader actively participating in creating the story according to his or her understanding of the human experience. This type of insertion of the reader into the experience of the narrative can be considered p-responses which refers to participatory responses. According to Green, Strange, and Brock, “The generation of both predictive and retrospective counterfactual representations of situations is a basic human thought process that has demons ratable effects in the formation of people’s representations of real-world and narrative situations”.18 Two forms of this participation can be defined through problem solving or repotting. Problem solving p-responses come to a reader when the narrative is processed with a goal in mind. A simple example is that of a fight that is about to occur. The reader may favor one character over another, thus looking for narrative cues in which to decide whether or not the character in favor can win. Thus, the reader is looking to solve problems within the narrative. Moll Flanders opens up this possibility as the reader experiences her life and looks for ways in which to find solutions to problems within the story.19 Re-plotting p-responses are designed in looking at the plot in retrospect, the reader recreating the plot through the knowledge of what has happened.20 The recreation of an event is done through the hypothetical supposition that occurs when examining the ‘what if’ in regard to a simple change that the reader inserts. In the example of the fight, the reader might see that he is not going to win, thus he or she goes back over the plot trying to identify what can be changed in order to change the outcome.21 This type of narrative response by the reader can be seen in Clarissa as the elements that fall into place are plucked out, suggesting that the desired end can be found through the repositioning of events. Moll Flanders can also be seen through this point of view, as most stories can be seen, the fates of the main characters affected by the crucial event that changes their course. The narration styles within Moll Flanders and Clarissa are both based upon first person narrative, but with deviations that create intrigue and interest. Moll Flanders is a story created through her perspective, the events happening around her in a seemingly disconnected fashion, but with insight and understanding about the human condition. What is revealed is done so through the use of rhetoric that convinces the reader of the nature of Moll’s world. Clarissa is designed through the revelations of several first person points of view, the letters of different individuals revealing multiple understandings of the human condition and the way in which the events have impacted that condition. Narrative is designed to tell a story, to reveal to the audience a sense of the world from which the story has been designed and the experiences of the characters within that world. Whether it is history or fiction, the story is constructed in a way to make a point to the reader and to draw them into the dialogue. The reader is a part of the narration, creating his or her own commentary through problem solving or re-plotting, the issues within the lives of the characters demonstrated through the relatable events that the reader can create a connection to his or her own experiences. As well, the reader will define his or her own world in reference to the impact of the related experiences, thus creating culture and designing the social construct. Narration is the way in which the world is created, the history of the human experience, whether told in historical or fictional values, constructing how the world is perceived and how action and reaction are designed. What is believed is designed by what is perceived as the truth, thus the power of narration is in the power to construct society through the human experience. Bibliography Butte, George. 2004. I know that you know that I know: narrating subjects from Moll Flanders to Marnie. Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press. Dannenberg, Hilary P. 2008. Coincidence and counterfactuality: plotting time and space in narrative fiction. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Defoe, Daniel, George Atherton Aitken, and John Butler Yeats. 1895. Romances and narratives. St. Giles ed. London: J.M. Dent & Co. Defoe, Daniel. 1968. Moll Flanders. London: Heron Books. Gibson, Andrew. 1990. Reading narrative discourse: studies in the novel from Cervantes to Beckett. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Green, Melanie C., Jeffrey J. Strange, and Timothy C. Brock. 2002. Narrative impact: social and cognitive foundations. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Keymer, Tom. 2004. Richardsons Clarissa and the eighteenth-century reader. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koehler, Martha J. 2005. Models of reading: paragons and parasites in Richardson, Burney, and Laclos. Lewisburg, Pa: Bucknell University Presses. Niles, John D. 1999. Homo narrans: the poetics and anthropology of oral literature. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. Polkinghorne, Donald. 1988. Narrative knowing and the human sciences. SUNY series in philosophy of the social sciences. Albany: State University of New York Press. Prince, Gerald. 2003. A dictionary of narratology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Richardson, Samuel, and Angus Ross. 1985. Clarissa, or, The history of a young lady. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books. Sen, Amrit. The pen employed in finishing her story: Moll Flanders and narrative self- reflexivity. Found in Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders. 1989 New Delhi: Penguin Classics. Read More