Orality and Literacy - class reading

    “In primary oral cultures, where there is no text, the narrative serves to bond thought more massively and permanently than other genres” (pg. 141). This quote from Walter Ong’s book reopened a topic of interest in my mind. I have always enjoyed reading fiction. When I was younger, I spent hours every night reading novels until I fell asleep - book in hand. I remember having some difficulties remembering what I was learning in school, but I was able to deeply summarize the stories I was reading in my free-time to my mom. Hardly a detail went unmentioned when I summarized the stories I was reading, but the information that I was learning at school that was not presented as a narrative was much more difficult to remember. I am really interested in Ong’s phrasing in this sentence. “Bond thought” is a captivating phrase. That phrase can be understood two ways, and it seems that Ong means it both ways. Narrative works to connect thoughts in each person's head, making them memorable, and narrative connects and establishes common thought between people in the primary oral community. Oral cultures do not have the luxury to read and reread a passage of text to gather its meaning. They hear words spoken to them once and must develop memories and thoughts from that one listen. Narrative helps that one spoken story and all of its implications and meaning stay in a person's head longer allowing them to return to it again and again without requiring the speaker to endlessly repeat it. 

This is a bit off-topic, but I have always wondered why humans are so driven by narratives. Is this because of some evolutionary reason or because something about narratives connects people to the image of God? 


March 3, 2022

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