Sunday, April 3, 2011

The Un-Narrative

The old saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is a phrase which can be expressed to many facets of human life (1). One of these facets is the narrative. As I mentioned in my definition of the narrative, a narrative is essentially a story recanting an event. There is a skill to presenting narratives to a person, but when this narrative is presented to a large number of people opinions will differ amongst the audience.
I remember during the presidential campaign in 2008 every person in my AP Government class was in awe of then-candidate President Obama. They remarked how wonderful and breathe taking his speeches were, how he was so inspirational. My teacher asked me for my opinion of a speech we were supposed to watch. I said, quite honestly I couldn't tell you what he said, it was so boring I fell asleep four minutes in. I received gasps from the class, disgusted glares from my fellow students. I know what they were thinking, how can this kid be in AP Gov, does he have not realize what greatness is, how thick is he? The truth was, I thought the speech was boring. It didn't interest me, his delivery wasn't exciting, and his argument lacked substance. Does that mean President Obama did a bad job? If his job was to captivate me then maybe, but he did a great job sparking the interest of the rest of my classmates.
The quality of a narrative is all opinion, as is many things in this world. Some people can be reached with long passive sentences, others prefer short and to the point narratives.

1) Kanazawa, Satoshi. "All stereotypes are true, except... II: 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder'". The Scientific Fundamentalist. 4/27/2008. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200804/all-stereotypes-are-true-except-ii-beauty-is-in-the-eye-th

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