I’m constantly finding myself interested in narrative – in so many ways. Once upon a time – which is of course the classic way to start a narrative, the word ‘narrative’ was just a formal way to say ‘story’. GCSE students have often been told that the word ‘narrative’ will impress the examiner more than ‘story’. Now I think ‘narrative’ has taken on added connotations of meaning. It’s as if a story is just what happens, while a narrative is how events are presented so as to give them meaning.
The buzzword
‘Narrative’ started to become a buzzword some time ago. I remember writing English GCSE resources for one big publisher, perhaps ten years ago. They used the word ‘narrative’ to refer to the way different elements of a lesson linked together progressively to ‘deliver’ their cumulative package of information. To be honest, I thought it was rather pretentious. Now it’s common to use the word to describe a collection of ideas or information. So I’m trying to accept it – in the spirit of being a language ‘descriptivist’ rather than a ‘prescriptivist’. In other words, I broadly accept that language comes to mean whatever people intend it to mean. And that gradually changes all the time.
Post-Truth
We are sometimes said to be in a Post-Truth era. Politicians like Trump and Putin have helped to create this, especially Trump, who dismisses any criticism of him as ‘fake news’. They encourage the public to believe that truth is whatever they – the popular leaders – want it to be. So, did Russia ‘invade’ Ukraine, or just mount a ‘special operation’ in self-defence? As news commentators now often tell us, it’s all about ‘controlling the narrative’. It’s as if there is no longer any truth to be discovered.
I once taught a 6th form Philosophy lesson in which I considered Rupert Sheldrake’s idea that science was ‘just another narrative’ – meaning that science didn’t provide the ultimate gateway to truth, just a collection of theories. My students, mostly boys, hated the idea. I suspect that they were resistant to the erosion of what they felt was the solid ground beneath their feet.
Fictional truth
When it comes to fiction, as I have found in writing my own novel Bad Things, narrative is all about creating meaning. How do the characters get into the messes in which they find themselves? How does the gang boss rise to the top of the grubby pile? How does the author organise narrative events so that they seem to make sense – and seem somehow inevitable, rather than random?
Humans are said to be ‘meaning-seeking’ or ‘meaning-creating’ beings. Is that just our weakness, or are we driven to search for a meaning that actually exists? To wax philosophical, I personally think that meaning is only really about how things relate to each other. How could there ever be any ultimate meaning in the universe? In the end, however far you explain things – whatever narrative you create, you reach a point where things just are as they are because they are. Beginnings and endings are artificial.
However, a novel with no start or finish, or with no narrative, wouldn’t work very well. So, we’re stuck with our ‘Once upon a time’ and our ‘happy ever after’, and our apparently meaningful linking of events. Now it remains only for me to tell you that this is …
THE END