Potiki And The Art Of Telling Stories :: essays research papers

This is an explorative essay on the theme in Patricia Graces novel Potiki that utter and retelling stories is an important and valuable crack of beness valet.An important theme in Potiki is the enduring head that creating and sharing stories as a central part of being human is important. It is a significant theme because the novel is heavily imbued with Maori culture, in which the stories and communicate teachings argon given prominence, and also because it is a popular belief that sight need narratives to give meaning, structure and value to their lives. This theme is displayed resolutely and touchingly in Potikis plot, book of factss, setting and symbolism, as the spate of a little(a) rural New Zealand community rediscover themselves through stories spoken and bring in Maori carvings. The mood that humans need narratives is the core theme in Potiki, and it is used also to link other themes and aspects of the novel it is in this bearing that we know the idea of story telling is an intrinsic part of the novels structure.The idea that creating and sharing stories is important as a central part of being human is shown in Potikis plot and characters when the mother of the main family in the book, Roimata, decides to let two of her children learn at home instead of at school. Instead of teaching them herself in the style of a traditional European education system, both Roimata and the children learn naturally from stories and histories which atomic number 18 shown as being part of everyones life. For example, Roimata says,It was a new discovery to find that these stories were, after all, most our own lives, were not distant, that there was no past or afterlife that all time is now-time, centred in the being. (Pp39.)In this way Roimata and the children are essentially learning in a way in which all people learn to some extent by sharing stories. The idea that the telling and retelling of stories sustains, enlarges and defines our view of the world is shown in Potiki when Roimata continues,They were not new stories to us, except that stories are always new, or else there is always something new in stories. (Pp132.) The character is emphasising the moral and educational value of stories in human development and rationality by saying that there is always something to learn from stories, even when they are retold repeatedly.