What is a narrative?

A narrative is basically a story. At first I was hesitant to use this word but honestly I don’t see the necessity for my definition to be in agreement with anyone else’s, after all; everyone sees the world in their own unique way. Abbot seems to be right on the money when he says that thousands of narratives are being told by a single person per day, every time a verb or a noun is involved, it leads to a narrative. He goes on to say that narrative does in fact have many genres and even art can be considered a narrative, but there is one thing he doesn’t mention at all; Narrative unlike communication does not require a sender! This is the fundamental difference between the two terms; narrative and communication respectively.

Now you; the reader must be wondering how is that so? Well a story does not necessarily require an author, unless of course you account every action to God or whatever you worship to and hence consider him to be the manufacturer of everything, but that’s a difference story (It’s cheating anyways). Look at the Grand Canyon for example, what do we see? We see a story being told about how the earth at some point in that part of the world went through some serious shiznet to end up the way it is now. Or forget nature altogether, lets for example look at the average CSI Miami episode.

A criminal enters a building and steals something, while in the process he gets into a wrestling match with the owner. The owner rushes to the phone but accidently trips on a telephone wire and dies. Now did the thief write this story? In a sense he did but he had nothing to do with the women’s death; she killed herself. This story did happen but there isn’t necessarily an author.


Let’s look at something simpler such as facial structure or expressions.

Often times a person’s face can tell the story of their life, every wrinkle, every dimple, every little scratch tells us a narrative which involved that person in a particular fragment of time. The list goes on, you guys get the point.

Before I finish, just like most of the terminologies we will cover in this course, narrative has its level of deliverance. Don’t forget this because it is one of the fundamental concepts to be learnt from this class. A simple traffic sign can tell us a narrative of a smaller degree while a harry potter book is much more complex; involving dragons and crazy wizard spells.

Sources:
1- Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Second Ed. Cambridge University press. P. 1. Print.
2- Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Second Ed. Cambridge University press. P. 3. Print.


By
Shahnawaz Syed