What is the point of a story?

A story is more than just a plot with characters and conflict.  Van Horn (2008) points out the difference in the connotation and denotation of a story. Understanding the nuances of story is almost more important when you get a whole story in just a single image.  Lambert (2010) emphasizes that stories are about more than just the plot.  It’s easy to say that a story is about your dad or your birthday or a vacation.  But the story is always about something more than the obvious sense.   Lambert encourages storytellers to become aware of “the emotional resonance of their story” (p.12).  I have to say, this drives home the fact that stories are not just for others, but they are also for ourselves.  In telling a story, I might get more out of it than the listener.

I can’t help but think of the conflict between proponents of New Criticism and the Reader Response theory.  Essentially, New Criticism sees a text as something that stands alone and exists almost in a vacuum and that interpretation the text relies on the text and its structure.  Reader Response theory argues that texts are inherently connected to their context and that the context of the writer and the context of the reader play an important role in how it’s interpreted.   When I think about stories, I see how both a New Criticism eye can be valuable, but, for me, it’s impossible to not let my own experiences and opinion color the way I read or tell something.

Generally, I found myself nodding in agreement with Lambert and his seven steps. However, I bristled a little at the “Sharing your story” step, because I believe that a story doesn’t have to have an audience necessarily.  I mean, I understand that generally storytelling is something communal, something shared, but I think that stories can be valuable just in the creation of them.