Story Telling

"You know it's funny what a young man recollects? 'Cause I don't remember bein' born. I don't recall what I got for my first Christmas and I don't know when I went on my first outdoor picnic. But I do remember the first time I heard the sweetest voice in the wide world" (Forrest Gump). As Forrest explains in the movie here, the human memory is truly an amazing thing. As people we carry memories, such as Jenny's voice, our entire lives. We can recall these memories so well, that we relive them with each story we tell about them. In my life, I hold tight to the memory of my late uncle. Because I keep this memory so close to me, I can bring stories of him to life just as Forrest has throughout the whole movie. It seems as if there is a coorelation between memory and the heart. For the memories that we can not retain, we create the idea of how we think it would have been. The heart picks up where the brain leaves off.

As Roger Ebert describes in his review, "Forrest Gump," " In a story rich in big laughs and quiet truths" (Roger Ebert). In any story, the truth is always mixed in with the fiction. If the story was nothing but the truth, the big laughs would not be quite as large. We must embellish the true to create a more captive audience. As Tim O'Brien stated in his lecture, "A good lie, if nobly told, for good reason, seems to me preferable to a very boring and pedestrian truth, which can lie, too" (O'Brien). If it makes a better story, a lie may be the better choice. In my experiences of story telling, fiction can often reveal more about the truth than the truth can. For instance, if a made up story that is completely plausible reveals more about a person than the truth does, it is evidently the better choice.