The Importance Of Storytelling

The Importance Of StorytellingIn her insightful see on the impost of Pueblo Indian gradetelling Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian emplacement Leslie Silko displays the huge fiber that stories play in the life of the ethnic group she originates from, she reveals the importance of falsehoodtelling for her family, ancestors, neighbors, closest friends and person only in ally herself. In spite of the title that draws our assist to the concepts of linguistic process and literature, the main and rally issue of her essay, which first appe ard as a speech for delivering before the audience, is bosh proper.Story is non a liaison to be told at certain moments in certain circumstances, if we deal with the life-style of Pueblo Indians. The integral life of those plenty is saturated with the multitude of stories and stories-within-stories. A Pueblo Indian, from his/her genuinely birth on, hears and listens to the stories, then, growing up, begins narrating them him/ herself, and in such a way all his/her life is accompanied by this vivid tradition. Thus, storytelling may be legal opinion of as a texture of their life, for, on the 1 hand, the entire innovation and reality be perceived in the light of stories, and, on the opposite hand, all the collective and individual experience of the Pueblos is trans hited into stories and then viva voce passed on to the following generations. This custom is more than just an equivalent of folklore in European or Asian traditions.Leslie Silko emphasizes that a written speech or statement is highly suspect among her mickle as it does not accord sharing the feelings appropriately. Mere graphical symbols be not able to stock all the copiousness of human experience, but an vocal word is. At first sight, it seems somewhat odd for a person re ard in European tradition, but if we look back at such past celebrities as Socrates who also rejected the written word as contributing to the d knowledgeslope of our memory, it becomes not so alien for us as well, although the following epochs realized the importance and even the preferable credibility of what is written or typed.The identical may be said close to the Jewish tradition, its pre-Talmudic period when Torah she be-al-pe1was veto from being put down the same is ab verboten early Christian tradition when Gospels were merely told by one person to some other the Vedic period of the Hindus when their sacred texts were recited orally and were not fixed in written form. There could be found much more parallels to the phenomenon of Pueblo story telling in the history of other ethnic groups and civilization.Leslie Silko goes on and says that, for the Pueblos, spoken communication is story (Silko 49). It is most clearly illustrated by the fact that some lecture in the Pueblo Indian language have their own stories. When a story is told, the teller often goes into the stories of words, and gum olibanumly a phenomenon of stories-wi thin-stories emerges. The story becomes a wind vane that is woven in all directions, which is contrary to the convention of linear tread by step narrating in European tradition.Language is story, story is language that dialectic unity of Pueblo weltanschauung determines the structure and content of their stories and the essay devoted to them in situation.The basis of any nations, ethnicitys mentality lies in their cosmogonic and theogonic myths, which progress to their collective unconscious, the last mentioned(prenominal) predetermines the style of thinking, living, and interacting of a certain nation. The Pueblo Indians are not an exception here, and the author introduces the creation story for us to understand the peculiarities of Pueblo lore of the universe.The story is significant both for its parallels and discrepancies with the Biblical creation story moreover, the latter are more numerous and are worth being mentioned first. The institution was created by Thought W oman Tseitsinako thinking of her sisters and, to yieldher with her sisters, she thought of eitherthing that is and thither appeared the orbit. Thus, every(prenominal)thing that is immanent in our ground is a part of the whole every element, every constituent of the reality belongs to this whole. The humans are also an indivisible element of the universe and belong to this universal entity. Contrary to the Bible where the world emerges as a result of Gods word, or Logos (Genesis 1, 3 canful 1, 1-3), the universe appeared through the thought of the goddess and her sisters, the tight link of humans to the nature are also more apparent in Pueblo Creation story. In the Bible, people are created and let in the Garden of Eden instanter by God, in the Pueblo tradition they come into the world due to the vexed efforts of the animals Antelope and Badger.Such a world outlook determines the monistic perception of the reality, it influences both the language and the storytelling of the Pueblo people. Stories are the part of their everyday life, they are multidimensional, web-like, organized in a complex structure that stretches far beyond chronological or formal logical framework. There are many repetitions, characteristic of the oral speech, digressions, stories-within-stories etc that make their stories a multilayer texture. There are no separate stories in Pueblo folklore each story is a part of some more world(a) or fundamental story, and the latter in turn constitutes larger stories, so that the whole Pueblo traditional and even modern everyday discourse is one big story with a huge number of smaller and narrow subdivisions.The stories are always bringing us together, keeping this whole together, keeping this family together, keeping this clan together tells us Leslie Silko. The destination of story is thus to preserve the wholeness of the universe. The author gives us tercet illustrations, three stories that are still being told and re-told until no wadays.The first one relates about a early days man who lost his new Volkswagen and felt very bad about it. The structure of the story may be defined as the triple one 1) the guy earns money, purchases the car and drives it then 2) it falls into the ravine and is broken to pieces 3) there come his friends and relatives essay to offer him consolation. What do they do in particular? They tell stories about the people who also lost their cars in the ravine, moreover, many of them lost their children and parents when their cars were going down into the arroyo. The third part of the story is an substantial element of Pueblo storytelling. Those stories join the guys life experience to those of the other people, and when put into that context, his transportation system is (or seems) not so great, he turns out to be relatively lucky, because he shunned the danger of losing his own and his relatives lives.The stories of the friends and neighbors turn grief into consolation, desperatio n into hope, loneliness into kind support. Finally, that guys experience joins the common discourse of people whose cars fell into the arroyo, that guy hence joins those people, he is not alone and that is the greatest consolation possible in such circumstances.The second story about a girl who drowned herself in Kawaik Lake is more dramatic. There can be also distinguished three parts 1) girls request to her mother to cook her yashtoah, the conditions her mother announces 2) girls decision to get drowned 3) carrying out her decision and her mothers return home.The core part of the story seems to be the second one, for it shows the transformations in the girls decisions and intentions. There are also stories-within-stories here, and certain periods and expatiate are highly repetitive, they are yashtoah, Im going to Kawaik and jump into the lake there and connatural phrases. The girl tells the old man about her quarrel with her mother and her self-destructive decision, the man, i n turn, goes to her mother and tells her what her daughter is about to do. These stories are so intertwined and interwoven, so organically situated in the context, that it is problematic to take them out of there.The story is more or less organized in a chronological order, the sequence of events is not interrupted but care should be nonrecreational to the fact that this story was heard by the author of the essay in a modernized version from her aunt. It is a vivid argument that traditions, and Pueblo storytelling in particular, possess a dichotomic nature on the one hand, they pass the ancient experience of the ancestors on to modern generation, on the other hand, they include the consecrate experience of the people and add them to the common stock of Pueblo history. So, the previous, present and future generations are not separated, they are connected by a fortified link of storytelling, which preserves the past and provides space for the future.What is more, this story expl ains why the butterflies are so beautiful and multicolored. The story of a girl is tightly connected to the biological diversity in the animal world.The third story happens in modern clipping, but it is nevertheless organized according to the existing var. of Pueblo storytelling tradition numerous repetitions, associations, reminiscences, stories-within-story etc. The woman goes into details of the troubles of her life freeing of husband and mother, hardships of employment etc but it ends with a glimmer of hope, she meets with her aunt and gramps, the latter gives her a very dear present a silver 1907 dollar, which shocks every member of their family.Later, as she writes, I kept it for a long time because I guess I wanted to have it to remember when I left my home country.The silver dollar presented by her poor grandfather became a material token of her warm memory of her family, childhood and homeland.Thus, the storytelling does not appear to be something that is done at be dtime in the life of Pueblo Indians, it is the nitty-gritty of their life.Detaching oneself from the mentioned stories, and having a look at the essay as the whole, it becomes evident that the essay itself is a Pueblo story, although told to the non-Pueblo people.It incorporates the analyzed stories, it is originally oral, it is saturated with the monistic worldview and it has a modal(a) chance to be incorporated into a larger piece of storytelling and is already the constituent of the Pueblo Indian discourse.The essay is also peculiar for being turn to to the two worlds the traditional world of the Pueblos and the modern globalized world. This essay intends to initiate and take a shit a dialogue between these worlds, to deepen the mutual understanding that may result in mutual enriching of the two distinct cultures.The author herself and the people she tells the stories of are inspiring examples of the success on this way of reciprocal understanding. She and the characters of the stories are integrated into modern American society, but they did not lose forgather with their cultural and ancestral legacy either. Although this view is not in bountiful accord with Paul Lorenz who states that the determine of American Indian cultures have been obligate to confront the alien values of European American culture (Lorenz 59). peerless more important aspect of the storytelling should be paid due attention to as well the unity of teller and listener. Leslie Silko emphasizes the importance of the latter a great deal of the story is believed to be inside the listener the storytellers role is to draw the story out of the listeners (Silko 51). Ib Johansen, however, views this issue from a bit other perspective In traditional societies storyteller plays an important role he/she is placed at the very center of the community, and his/her activities are considered as infixed to the very self-awareness or sense of identity of the community (Johansen) it is the te ller whom Ib Johansen places as the key figure in storytelling. Here we see a unmixed example of the European approach.As it occurs to me, there is not the notion of central or key role / importance in Pueblo Indian world outlook. Important are all the inhabitants and objects of the world despite their role, size, destination all of them are of allude relevance, all are necessary, all indispensable, all divine.The monistic and pantheistic approach to life, people, phenomena and objects determines the reverent attitude towards them, on the one hand, and creates difficulties in establishing the hierarchy of values, on the other hand. It is indeed problematic to define what passage is most important in a certain story, or what dealings are more preferable either personal, or tribal, or clan ones.Paul Lorenz recognizes that the fiction of Leslie Silko is the product of American Indian, rather than Western, cultural values (Lorenz 59). Indeed, the very style of her essay shares many common features with the traditional Pueblo Indian narratives. It is evident in her reference to ethnologists and anthropologists who tend to differentiate the types of stories the pueblos tell she says that the people of her ethnic group never divide the stories into classes, family stories are given equal recognition (Silko 51).A distinctive characteristic of the storytelling among this tribal group of Indians is that they draw together more importance to what is said than how something is said, the content is more important than the form according to Pueblo weltanschauung. The particular language spoken isnt as important as what a speaker is trying to say, writes the author of the essay. That peculiarity is also label by Ib Jansen when he retells case of an Eskimo woman accused of killing a storeman.Thus, the notions of myth, legend, parable, tale and the like are not quite applicable to the tradition of Pueblo storytelling, they are difficult or, even impossible, to different iate in the context of their culture. The Creation story, Home Country story, the story of the young mans Volkswagen and the speech of Ms Silko are of equal relevance and credibility in the eyes of Native American. They do not abandon negative stories of their own families and clans they are always trying to convey the content, essence of the story so that the expressive means kip down to the background. The cosmogonic and sacred myths are as plausible as their own experience in the context of Pueblo Indian Culture.Summing up, it is reasonable to point out that Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective and the other workings mentioned in this paper focus on the essential characteristics of Pueblo peoples storytelling tradition, they emphasize its monistic worldview, illustrate how several stories may unite into one their language and the whole life are tightly linked to the stories and cannot be imagined without each other. Pueblo Indian storytelling tradition canno t but be recognized as a real valuable constituent of the American and world culture.