The Ipod Generation

There is no better testament to Benjamin's Storyteller than today's society. Personal interactions have been minimized more than ever before. Emails, IMs, text messages take the place of interpersonal communication. Even in everyday life, walking from point a to point b, so many of us pop in our Ipod headphones and zone out. We distance ourselves from the world around us, discouraging any type of communication. Ear buds give the signal, "stay away" and indicate the intent not to talk at a particular moment. It's no wonder that art forms such as storytelling are slowly dying out. There is too much hustle and bustle, too much impersonality to afford time for such an activity.

Benjamin seems to argue that the novel has begun to take the place of storytelling. While this may be true, I think that a number of other things have contributed to the demise of storytelling. In our rushed world, there is really no time set aside for listening to the stories of experience or legend. We schedule no times into our days for that. However, there is something to be said for the communication of this day and age. It is efficient and it is accessible. The way we communicate may be different, but it is communication nonetheless.

There is a wealth to be had in storytelling though. There is a richness in a story that has been carefully handed down from one generation to the next. When someone relates a story to an audience they add so much to it that a text alone could not deliver. With oral delivery comes inflection, emotion, explanation, and group response. In this respect, storytelling is akin to theater. It is active, living literature.

Currently, even the novel seems to be an art form that has slowly begun to die out. Children display a decreased interest in reading. The high tech world of video game entertainment is much more thrilling and captivating. Slowly but surely, it seems as though the novel has fallen to the wayside. I cannot help thinking that storytelling could be the answer to this dilemma. Storytelling breathes live to a story. for example, stories told by the fireside at night are always spookier and morbidly fascinating. Perhaps the way to get youth back into stories, is to tell them aloud. Novels can seem very flat and limp in comparison to many things in this world today. It seems that we should try a little harder to keep storytelling alive not only for the sake of storytelling, but for the sake of literature in all forms.

We were talking in class about the misrepresentation of the lower classes that would and has resulted from the decline of storytelling. Who will tell the stories of the lower classes if they are not spread by word of mouth. Who writes novels, gets them published, reads and discusses them? The middle and upper classes. The decline of storytelling could also result in a silencing of the lower class. It could contribute even more to the oppression felt by these individuals.