Narrative and Storied Nature

 “So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings.”. 

A narrative is any account of a set of related events or experiences, most often related in chronological or some other order of sequence.  It can be fictional or nonfictional, written or oral.    It implies both a narrator and a receiver, though I think in psychology the narrator and the hearer can be the same person.   Narrative psychology deals with what has been called the

"storied nature of human conduct", that is, how human beings deal with experience by observing stories and listening to the stories of others. Operating under the assumption that human activity and experience are filled with "meaning" and stories, rather than lawful formulations, narrative psychology is the study of how human beings construct stories to deal with experiences.

Consider Gollum's narrative.   He saw his friend holding on to his birthday present, the ring.   He killed his friend so he could get his hands on the ring.  Then he went off into the tunnels so he could preserve his treasure, which he found gifted him with invisibility, making it easier for him to prey on food sources.  One day he managed to lose his birthday present, and to his horror and despair, someone else stole it and in spite of a game of wits, was able to make off with it.  From then on, his life was about seeking and retrieving his possession.   Nothing else mattered, not kindness, not cruelty, not contempt.   His narrative ends with a leap for the ring and a plunge into a fiery pit.

Consider the narrative of Saruman.  He was gifted and powerful, but wanted more.   For a brief time he gained more, but then descended to an opportunistic brigand, to be overset and exiled by former inferiors, then to death at the hand of a despised minion.  

In this post, I am concerned with how the personal narrative, the one we sometimes try to control and fit others into, is an approximation or distortion of the True Narrative.   Truth is immense, infinite.   We can partially grasp it but not wholly.   The true Narrative has its own logic, Logos.   It is mirrored in all sorts of places.... in nature, in excellent literature, in history, in people's individual lives.   

Even when someone is working out a false narrative, as with the case of Gollum, Saruman and Denethor, the pseudo-narrative subserves the true one.   In the long run, and not without collateral. 

Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate had their narratives, each probably quite convincing to their own constituents.   As Ronald Knox pointed out in Retreat for Laypeople, Jesus said very little in this final 18 hours after the Passover meal.    He was enacting it, not commenting on it primarily.

As for the people we know were on the right side of this narrative:

One gave him a cloth to wipe His face.

One bore His Cross for part of the way.

A few -- a mother and a friend and several others who loved Him -- followed Him on the shameful road and stayed at the foot of the Cross.

One wept in penitence, and others, though their courage and strength failed them at the crucial moment, abided in sorrow.

One gave Him a tomb.

Others anointed and dressed His Body.

As for the others, they served the Narrative as Gollum, Saruman and Denethor served the story of the King's Return.   What they stood for,  the story they thought they were unfolding, is gone while the Story continues on.  

In Lord of the Rings, Tolkien used the narrative structure called interlacing:

Interlace, known in the Middle Ages as entrelacement, was a narrative device developed in Medieval literature, especially in France. Rather than seeking to make a story as clear as possible with a main plot and subsidiary storylines as in a modern novel, the interlaced medieval tale aimed to reflect the confusing flow of events that people perceive in the world.

 The technique makes possible a number of effects that suited the story he was telling:  it allowed for suspense, for interconnectedness, for a sense of depth and historicality.    

The Great Story is like that too.    The individual narratives are sorted out over time.   False narratives can cause harm but they do not prevail.    Things that look unimportant, like the hobbits from Sauron's tower, become crucial, while great kings' names have been forgotten.