What can we learn from stories?
Exploring the lessons we can learn from stories, especially the stories of our culture, is an important exploration for any writer. This was the work we engaged in during the sixth week of the writing marathon intended to inspire both with my first year writing students and the Just Write virtual writing group. The prompt built on the previous week’s exploration of what stories matter as my first year writing class prepares to write Rhetorical Analysis essay exploring a popular culture narrative (book, movie, or television show) that is important both to the writer and to our culture.
Using examples such as Finding Nemo and Black Panther, we explored the moral, ethical, and philosophical questions that we can safely explore in stories before embarking on the more dangerous work of real life. We considered how stories teach us to be human by exploring our psychological conflicts as well as subconscious fears and desires through such stories as Batman and Coco. We delved into the archetypal stories and characters we see crafted by storytellers such as Tolkien and Rowling.
Then we considered this quote:
What these films deal with is the fact that we all have good and evil inside of us and that we can choose which way we want the balance to go. “Star Wars” was made up of many themes. It’s not just a single theme. One is our relationship to machines, which are fearful but as — also benign and they’re — they’re an extension of the human, not mean in themselves. The — the issues of friendship and your obligation to your fellow man and to other people that are around you, that you have control over your destiny, that you — you have a destiny, that you have many paths to walk down and — and you may have a great destiny. If you decide not to walk down that path, your life might not be as satisfying as if you wake up and listen to your inner feelings and realize what it is that you have a particular talent for and what contributions you can make to society.
GEORGE LUCAS
Then we selected a pop culture story important to use and wrote about the big important questions that story challenged us to explore, how the story challenged us to consider our humanity, or how the story/characters fit into our storytelling tradition.
What have you learned from stories? How have the lessons you have learned from stories impacted your life?
