Blog post #2

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Stories are told daily, each with a distinct meaning and background, from religious stories such as the bible to fables, stories like these often have a deeper meaning than just “be nice”, etc. For example, the bible contains the story of Jesus who is believed to be the son of God. Another related story is from the Quran and is also closely related to the Bible, however, with a different character.  Stories like these have deep meaning and sometimes have dedicated days to them, for example, Christmas, the holiday celebrates the birth of Jesus. Other stories such as The Three Little Pigs have simple meanings, “Taking your time to do something right, pays off.” In class this week, we read stories that contained opinions from Patriotism to life, The Cloudy Patriot written by Sarah Vowell tells the story of her experience of 9/11 and how the world affected her. In the end, she understands how a tragic event can bring people together and she is now more willing. On the other hand, this is Water written by David Foster Wallace describes life and how his audience (college students) are most likely not ready for life. His use of different rhetorical strategies is also used to show the horrific life in and out of office, etc. These varieties of stories have proven to change readers' perspective and take action, personally, the story, “This is Water” has changed my perspective on my future and how it would look. To end with a question, if stories like these are in books or online throughout the world and given access to everyone, can these stories truly affect a contingent of people, can they help society? Can it ruin it? History is also a story of those who survived, written by those who survived and twisted in many ways by modern authors.

Comments

  1. ToroSeptember 15, 2024 at 5:39 PM

    I like that you shared your internal questioning on the power of stories, and how the information we retain from them helps to shape our minds. I think it was especially present in the Cloudy Patriot piece where we saw the authors perception of the American flag change as America is forced to face its history. It does make us think, how will the stories we hear change our perceptions of what we know?

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