“It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine, that children learn or mislearn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are. Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutters in their actions as in their words. Hence there is no way to give us an understanding of any society, including our own, except through the stock of stories which constitute its initial dramatic resources.”
In my own words this passage is essentially saying stories are what give us our general ideas and some kind of understanding about the world around us from a very young age. In recent years, it has become common knowledge that the first five years of life are when the mind is soaking up information, exactly like a sponge, and the stories they hear are how they shape their view of society, and really everything the earthly world has to offer. McIntyre even talks about the eldest son wasting a large inheritance, which showcases “the fool” character that is present in many stories, this teaches children what not to do so they won’t end up the fool; or even lost children, which boldly highlights that the world is a dangerous place, especially for children, the most common example today in America would be the story of Hansel and Gretel. This is the story of two young siblings who get lost in the woods and end up lured into a wicked witches home by candy. When I was a child this terrified me, teaching me not to run off.
McIntryle explains that you take these stories away from a child, they will not understand the world around them and become anxious and scared. Going back to how the first five years of life are when a child soaks up the most information about their surroundings, and if they aren’t given enough information about the world they will not be familiar and comfortable with the world around them, thus you end with a child who is terrified of what they don’t understand, which is the world around them, and becomes anxious and frightened while in it.
Another point brought to life in this passage is that stories are imperative for individuals to understand the world. Stories are what teach us right from wrong and what’s what from our earliest years, but all of this is part of a culture that can’t be understood without stories.
However, where do these culturally embedded stories come from? Well they come from the world around us, almost every culture, from ancient times to present day, had a classic story showcasing “the fool”, and this is so embedded in human culture because we see things like this firsthand, repeating over and over again since the ancient times. We learn the stories as we grow and once grown, we relive the same stories over and over again.
When I was a child, I loved stories and I was the kid who was always reading. I submerged myself into cheesy stories about teenage girls in high school and college, and as I grew older I grew out of those stories and eventually I grew into my own narrative. Since I lived in a middle class neighborhood, I had an average high school experience, thus I went from hearing those stories to living my own. I don’t remember the title but I remember a book I read when I was younger about a girl in college who had always dreamed of college with starry eyes, but when she showed up she faced a series of personal issues such as a loved one becoming painfully distant, almost a stranger, and other emotional hardships that make her recluse to her dorm in a depressed funk for the majority of her first year, however, of course, it ended happily. However the way this book explained college was how I perceived college to be up until this recent year. However now I feel as if I’m in my own, similar story, running parallel to hers.
In the end we either become the stories we read as children to learn about the world, or we see examples of them in our lives. Therefore making us story telling animals.
Philosophy? 