A narrative is “present at all times, in all places, in all societies” (Barthes, 237) as stated by Ronald Barthes. To tie in with that, H. Porter Abbott says “narrative is something we all engage in…we make narratives many times a day, every day of our lives” (Abbott, 1). Barthes takes it further and says “there is not, there has never been anywhere, any people without narrative” (Barthes, 237). This is quite a declarative statement to claim that no one goes without narrative, however everyone has their stories to share, and thus narratives are indeed everywhere and something the population takes part in. Whether it is a short story or twittering what you just ate for lunch, narratives come in all sorts of genres, making them indispensable.
Abbott quotes Barthes who discusses the different genres which fall under narratives. He explains that narratives are the overall structure for novels, short stories, tragedies, comedies, sagas, among other genres and narratives are so encompassing that they can even be found in non-narrative genres (Abbott, 2). It is human tendency to unconsciously insert narratives into immobile settings and with such ease (Abbott, 5). This starts with infants at the age of three or four when they are able to begin pairing verbs with nouns, because essentially according to Abbott, that is all a narrative needs (Abbott, 3).
Abbott defines a narrative, point blank, as the representation of an event or a series of events (Abbott, 13). Because narratives are an every day, multiple times a day occurrence, they are second nature and with that the importance of narratives can be lost. Abbot claims with simplicity that as soon as we follow a subject with a verb we are most likely engaged in a narrative. However he goes more in depth to includes how narratives are so much more than they seem, they can help shape time and what is more important to humans than understanding time? “A narrative is the principal way in which our species organizes its understanding of time,” says Abbott (Abbott, 3) and without understanding time our species is lost. Without narratives “we do not have any mental record of who we are until narrative is present as a kind of armature, giving shape to that record” (Abbott, 3). What Abbott is saying is that narratives act as the framework for memory because without narratives there is no recollection; the stories, or narratives told allow people to form memories and shape who they are.
Janet Murray discusses the impact of computers and the internet on narratives in her book, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. With the internet, every form of representation is being converted to electronic form so the world’s computers are potentially accessible to one another and a “single comprehensive global library” (Murray, 84) of narratives can be formed. This includes a collection of films, books, newspapers, television programs, databases; essentially a library available from anywhere in the world. With everything available on the internet, “the capacity to represent enormous quantities of information in digital form translates into an artist’s potential to offer a wealth of detail, to represent the world with both scope and particularity” (Murray, 85). The internet offers writers to tell their narratives from multiple vantage points which anyone can access. Abbott says, narratives are a “distinctive human trait” given its presence in human communication (Abbott, 1); this can be seen all over the globe especially as people tell their own narratives instantly throughout all hours of the day by tweeting, facebook statuses, away messages on instant messaging programs, and blogs.
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Abbott, H. P. (2008). The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barthes, R., & Duisit, L. (1975). An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative. New Literary History.
Murray, Janet. (1998). Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Boston: MIT Press.
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