Storytelling has been, since the earliest times, the way people have ordered their reality. It is the fundamental use of language, that which creates and defines reality. As James Baldwin said in his essay, If Black Language Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me What Is?, "People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate. . .What joins all languages, and all men [sic], is the necessity to confront life, in order, not inconceivably, to outwit death" (37). Baldwin's understanding of the use of language can be extended to the purpose of storytelling. By telling a story,

not only do we create reality, we defeat death.

Given a chance, we convert real tragedy into stories and then makes stories into parables, or life-lessons, which we use as the beginnings of wisdom. The Vietnam War was a tragic time in American history. Boys lost their innocence, lost their lives, and the country was split down the middle because of it. Then, in our stories, it became a metaphor for all wars, for all loss and schisms. It became a profound symbol of greed, violence and the danger accompanying technology. It tells the tale of love, of fear and of isolation. It's not the war that did this, though. It was the memory, the souls of those who fought the war.

Turner grounds his theory in the neuroscience of Gerald Edelman, who argues that the mind uses overlapping systems (he calls them "maps") of neurons to pull together scattered bits of sensation and thought. Stories are the forces that set these neurons firing and connecting, and the connections that result become the architecture of human intelligence. Those who spend long hours reading stories to their children are clearly on the right track-and so is the child who demands the same story over and over again. A neural path is being carved through the mind; perhaps the child gets it right by instinct.

We might have expected that humanity would at some point have resisted this swelling ocean of stories, would have been repelled by so much narration, so many ingenious plots, so many satisfying resolutions. But no: it appears we can never get enough. We thirst after stories of all kinds-epics, tragedies, comedies, anecdotes, parables. We are insatiable. Many of

Some common words found in the essay are:
David Epston, Sigmund Freud, Ranger Tonto, Gerald Edelman, Tell People, Vietnam War, Modern World, Literary Mind, Charles Dickens, Chronicles Narnia, telling stories, 20th century,
Approximate Word count = 1107
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)