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The Collective Story

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"What kind of story are we in?"

This appears to be a very simple question; however, it requires much introspection as well as extrospection. Of course, it is easiest to start with the self. My life (what has happened, is happening, and will happen) is my own narrative, my own story. My story is mine and nobody else’s. Nobody shares the exact same narrative as I do; neither the people that surround me nor the people I confide in. It is a powerful idea, but also a lonely one.
The same goes for everyone else. We are all main characters of our own narratives and no two narratives look exactly alike. Other people might pass through our narratives - some lasting for multiple chapters, others staying only for a few sentences - but we do not share full-length narratives. Even the moments that we share with other characters do not result in the same story due to different understandings, perceptions, and memory flaws. This idea follows one of Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle’s five narrative theses: “Stories are multiple: there is always more than one story” (qtd. in McQuillan 3).


However, the question posed asks about the collective. If we each have an individual narrative, where is the collection of these narratives? Is there a giant entity that hosts all of our stories? Is there someone or something that combines all of the multi-sided stories like a book with chapters that alternate points of view? We probably all have different ideas of who or what holds this infinite narrative. Some might bring up religion. Others might say the collection of stories is what creates history or society.


But even that’s not completely true. Another of Bennet and Royle’s narrative theses states, “The telling of a story is always bound in power, property, and domination” (qtd. In McQuillan 3). Individually, our personal narrative is our inherent truth but collectively the story that is told (or found to be the truth) is the “winning side.” As the saying goes, history is written by the winners. Those in power tend to have an easier job of creating narratives for other groups. The dominators try to mold the narrative of the world, the collective story, to encourage their goals. Luckily, we know there is multiplicity in stories so we do not have to take the dominating story as truth.


Therefore, I believe we are in a story of growth, development, and perseverance. Our narratives, although extremely different from each other, share these three traits. Every individual grows throughout his or her story, whether the narrator is a human, a country, or an animal. Each individual narrator develops throughout the story. I am not talking about physical development (that’s covered in growth), but mental, spiritual, and ethical development. Finally, every story includes perseverance. Individual narrators continuously fight in the power struggle of denying one truth for another, whether it be textbooks white-washing history or family members remembering events differently. To think about our collective story - the story that we are all a part of - requires us to remember that stories are bound in power and every narrative is unique.

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