Stories as valuable currency

 Stories as valuable currency and the ‘Arabian Nights’

 

  We all know that stories are valuable. Stories are everywhere: from the more evident ones like novels and movies, to video advertisement. Storytelling is one of the most ancient format for the discourse of ideas; from myths to legends to old wives tales, beneath the veil of fiction, a truth often resides there. It is also through stories that we interact and negotiate with the world - personal statements, anecdotes, etc. Therefore, stories almost acts as a currency in of itself. 

  The idea came to me when I was reading ‘The Wrath and the Dawn’ and ‘The Rose and the Dagger’ by Renee Ahdieh, which is a reimagined work of the story of Shahrazad’s 1001 Nights. This led me to read a condensed version of the ‘Arabian Nights’ by Andrew Lang - though I haven’t exactly finished it yet. Through these readings, one of the things that I was drawn to the most was the aspect that many of these characters the collection of tales traded with stories. Many of them used stories to have their life spared, and which is also exactly what Shahrazad does - the power of narratives and imagination and style is what ultimately, I think, helped her to escape, and like of the characters within her tales, the fate of death. 

   Now there are a lot of angles to look at in this body of work, and I have not read the longer version of this and some details I will miss, but from what I have read, I would like to look at how stories are used as a way of trading in these tales, and how it suggests the crucial function of narrative and stories in real life. These are mainly my own thoughts, and if you agree or disagree, please leave a comment down below. I would love to hear what you have to say, I think it would be an interesting conversation. 

   In the ‘Arabian Nights’, tales such as ‘Story of the Fisherman’ where a fisherman uses storytelling to escape his death and negotiate his sentence with the magical Genii. Or the ‘The Story of the Three Calenders’ where the executioner demands that her victims share their story in order not to get killed or the first story the ‘Story of the Merchant and the Genius’ where each merchant requested that the Genii listen to their story, and if it finds it moving or interesting, it would spare their lives - and most of the time this tactic succeeds. I think this shows in a way the idea that a story that touches and moves someone is a powerful currency - and I think it is quite true. We buy things based on its story: commercials use narratives to sell products, student personal statements use narrative to convince the college to accept them, in job interviews they ask you to recount that time when you faced an obstacle and you use a narrative to prove to them that you are capable of overcoming problems. Especially in art - many of the more modern art that are for auctions has its justification as a piece of art, in the story that it tells. I think this is because stories can move people, it translates our experience through the medium of spoken/written language in a comprehensible way to the other person. 

  It is also because, I think, stories and narratives are the building block of our reality. Thus by telling stories, you build a world - also narrative isn’t constrained to literature, like novels or movies, but even in scientific research. Stories here function as justification for actions, for certain outlook - like anecdotes, for existence. These merchant men/ travelling men use stories to justify why they should be live. So not only is storytelling helpful but also crucial.   

  So important in fact that in the story of ‘The Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor’, Sindbad the storyteller pays his audience to come back in order to have his story told. Here in this tale, multi-narrative is also depicted as important, since at the beginning, there was this man called Hindbad, who only heard the story that Sindbad was rich and lived a luxurious life, and by having Sindbad retelling his story, his narrative adds more complexity to Hindbad's own original narrative and challenges his own initial narrative. Through this I think, shows the importance of diverse narrative in order to come to a middle ground which would be closer to the truth. This reminds me of a GCSE non-fiction text that we had to study for English Language, and that is the ‘Danger of A Single Story’ by Chimamanda Adichie’ - where she warns us the danger of when one single narrative dominates and overshadows every other one would result in misunderstandings that can be very fatal and catastrophic. For example the single narrative of Africa being poor overshadows the narrative where there are rich and vibrant cultures, leading many of us to associate it with negative connotations and almost rendering that association as truth and by doing that I think sometimes it can lose it incentive for change - that’s that it is, what is there to do?

  All of this, I want to say is that stories are the most powerful form of currency, more so than money, in a way. Stories can buy you victory, stories can buy you happiness, stories can relieve the pain of death. But equally, stories can buy failure, stories can buy you misery and make death even more painful. Depending on which story you choose to tell and which to believe, a certain world reality will be built around you. 

  Furthermore, stories can be more true than reality. As in that it is only through stories that you are able to come to a truth for yourself. For example, in the reimagined work by Renee Ahdieh, both Khalid, the Caliph and Shahrzad both find truth within the characters and settings of the stories that Shahrzad tells. Stories function as a way of enlightenment, it can shed light on truth we might not want to admit. Moreover, a frame narrative - stories within stories - can function as a mirror or glass: it can reflect and reinforce a narrative, or refract and challenge it. And maybe, because through storytelling, using fictional characters, perhaps you are able to distance yourself enough to realise the truth before applying it to your own situation.

  This made me think of ‘Hamlet’ by Shakespeare. In this play, as famously uttered by prince Hamlet himself, the story is used for him to ‘capture the king’s consciousness’. Here he uses narrative and stories in order to collect empirical evidence, since if the story reflects the truth, then how the King reacts is proof of his guilt or anger at seeing his crime being unravelled in front of his eyes. Slso, in regards to Hamlet’s sadness, I think it is because his narratives, his stories, he keeps it mainly to himself. He has many soliloquies where he tells the story of his misery and loneliness and suspicion of others. Yet because it is a single narrative, not shared with anyone since it is a soliloquy, he is internalising such a narrative without a counter narrative in order to challenge it - and Horatio never really challenges his friend's narrative either. He might have not agreed, but never really challenges it. This internalisation of a single narrative could have been the reason for his misunderstanding of Ophelia’s coded language in a scene where though she is behaving oddly, but because the only narrative Hamlet knows so far is about corruption and betrayal that he quickly jumps to the conclusion that she is now also betraying him. This leads to misunderstanding that proved to be fatal. Anyway, that is what I think is a way of looking at it - what do you guys think? 

  Anyway, through all of this, I guess what I really wanted to say is that the story is - as the title of this episode - a valuable currency. Many things in this world function around stories and with stories and narratives. And that storytelling is an important activity in order to weave in different voices in order to reach a more accurate truth. 

  So yeah, let me know what you guys think and I hope you have enjoyed reading this, thank you!