We encounter narrative in our lives not only through stories or conversations but also in our thoughts and plans
Souad Khalil | Libya
Narrative has many definitions; it exists in everything and everywhere. Sometimes it is clear and effective, and at other times, it is silent and implicit—but it is always present.
We encounter narrative in our lives not only through stories or conversations but also in our thoughts and plans. This means that stories exist in our daily life—we observe what happens around us by anticipating and weaving small narratives. Storytelling is a method humans use to comprehend their world of experiences and desires.
It has been found that the principles of narrative have been a subject of study across many professions—for instance: the lawyer, the historian, the biographer, the teacher, the psychoanalyst, and the journalist. This indicates that studying narrative as an art cannot be limited to literary stories alone. Rather, we must conduct comparative studies between narrative styles used in literature and those employed in other fields for gathering and understanding information.
Thus, narrative exists outside literature—in lyrical poetry, essays, sequences of events, data classification, logical deduction, media, sermons, prayers, speeches, arguments, summaries, indexes, dictionaries, charts, maps, receipts, advertisements, donation requests, instruction manuals, price lists, directories, phonebooks, birth announcements, credit documents, prescriptions, administrative regulations, and legal contracts.
For our study of narrative, we chose the book Narrative in Cinema to explore some concepts clarified by certain studies in this field.
In a simplified introduction, texts are divided into four types: narrative fiction, such as stories; non-narrative works like history; non-narrative literature, such as some forms of poetry; and non-literary, non-narrative texts like essays. However, the boundaries between these four types are not absolute but relative. Labeling a poem as non-narrative doesn’t mean it won’t present some aspects of narrative, such as describing a scene or character. We can hypothetically divide writing domains into specific categories, assigning narrative to one and not the other, but this remains a relative matter.
Thus, we must distinguish between two uses of narrative: the first is societal—as a form of communication and understanding among individuals; the second is personal and temporary—narrative here becomes a form of personal thought and reflection that shapes human behavior and reactions. These two types of narrative are interdependent: no person can communicate with others without thinking, reflecting, and perceiving what is around them. Likewise, human thoughts and reflections cannot be studied in isolation from the society in which one lives.
We must therefore study a range of human skills in order to understand the narrative practices within a society—skills like manufacturing a product, selling it, and also appreciating its value and usefulness.
So how can we judge something to be narrative, and how does narrative intervene to help humans understand and perceive the world around them?
First, we define narrative as a mental process that organizes information into a specific framework through which we interpret our surroundings. Alternatively, narrative is a method of organizing spatial and temporal information into a sequence of causes and effects with a beginning, middle, and end. Thus, narrative entails our judgment and perception of events around us.
The term “narrative” may refer to telling a particular story or to the internal weaving of that story within the mind.
When it comes to logical transitions in narrative, and how internal, psychological narratives organize information, studies on narrative structure assert that narrative is not merely a description of place, time, or even sequential events. For example, describing furniture placement in a room is not considered narrative. Similarly, a cooking recipe is not narrative even though it involves a sequence of events. Likewise, serial events such as planetary orbits, measurements, or alphabet recitation are not narrative.
Narratives are arrangements of specific experiences that include various temporal, spatial, and causal concepts. This means that stories must involve a transformation—a person or object must move from one state to another. Narrative, then, includes human practices such as movement, gesture, or dance—experiences that have a beginning, middle, and end.
However, the beginning, middle, and end are not fixed in position. The first sentence of a story might not be the “beginning” in a narrative sense. Instead, the beginning may span several sentences or occur in the middle or end of the work. So, the beginning is not necessarily spatial—it’s a logical starting point. Stories are thus a collection of shifting information tied together through the relations of beginning, middle, and end.
Tzvetan Todorov described narrative as a series of transitions through five stages:
An initial state of equilibrium
A disruption to this equilibrium
Recognition of the disruption
Attempt to repair the disruption
A return to a new state of equilibrium
These five stages are not arbitrary but rather structured by cause-and-effect relationships—principles that govern possibility, probability, and logical necessity within transitions.
Todorov suggests that narrative is based on two assumptions: existence (the presence of a thing or person) and change (its transformation from one state to another due to causal relationships). Existence pertains to people and things; change applies to actions or natural forces.
Returning to our source book, we see that a writer—be it a storyteller or novelist—relies on observing life’s phenomena. But unlike ordinary people, the writer does not see the world with casual eyes. Instead, the writer delves inward, questions, and suffers silently—storing life’s images in memory, filtering them, and rediscovering both reality and self. This accumulation becomes a blend of social experience and individual insight, shaped through the writer’s interaction between consciousness and subject matter.
Thus, the story or novel is the product of a writer’s imagination combined with social memory. This is the essence of narrative in fiction.
Let’s return to the book Studies in Narrative to shed light on the narrative in fictional films. It suggests that the viewer is treated as the sum of ideal points that shift from scene to scene. The viewer is essentially an eye that receives everything. The theory of narrative that focuses on the viewer’s experience explains all narrative phenomena. Since the viewer’s understanding is central to the narrative, the film’s role is tied directly to this interpretation.
Contrary to traditional literary theory that imagines the reader as highly qualified to decode meaning, this theory sees the viewer as psychologically flawed—similar to real-life viewers. To understand a fictional film, we must provide concrete examples to support this theory.
The book includes extensive studies—over 400 pages—making it difficult to summarize. However, we’ve selected key concepts.
The Function of Narrative
Understanding the importance of narrative brings attention to at least two potentials:
Narrative may be the product of human thought, similar to language.
Narrative may serve a social function, becoming a crucial element in human societies.
Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss linked the characteristics of myths and folklore with the cognitive processes of the human mind. Though we cannot definitively prove or disprove this theory, we can examine how narrative exhibits its social function. Lévi-Strauss, a pioneer in this area, studied the nature of myths and legends in ancient and primitive literatures. Based on this, he proposed that we can identify structures of meaning that distinguish one culture from another.
Following the path of Vladimir Propp, Lévi-Strauss recognized shared structural elements in myths that transcend literary boundaries. He also identified cultural definitions in the transformation of these shared forms. The one element that myths and early narratives have in common is their profound social impact.
Lévi-Strauss believed that myths were used to deal with contradictions and oppositions in human experience and to explain the inexplicable. Mythology, for example, attributes weather changes to the anger of gods—not to precisely describe our relationship with them, but to help humans shape their lives accordingly.
The social function of narrative can also be seen in myths and rituals. Lévi-Strauss suggested that one of the essential features of myth is its reliance on binary oppositions—understanding something through its opposite. One method humans use to make sense of their world is by categorizing it into collective, opposing groups: earth and sea, man and woman, good and evil. In this way, we form ideas, begin to understand our world, and define meaning as the product of understanding a thing and its opposite.
Structuralism and Narrative
This study notes that structuralist theories fall under the general trend of structuralism. Structuralism greatly influenced narrative theory because it focuses on the same issues narrative does—not just the features of a specific story, but the general patterns. When structuralists study films, they focus on identifying the genre of the work, the style used, and the progression of events.
What they observe and deduce becomes the fundamental components of narrative art or a medium’s narrative system—not merely characteristics of a specific type of narrative.
With that, we conclude our overview. The book contains extensive analyses of cinematic examples and detailed studies that cannot be condensed into these few pages.
References
Studies in Narrative
Edited and introduced by Dr. Yehia Azmi
Academy of Arts.
Read: Redefining the Beauty: Virtual Realities
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Souad Khalil is a Libyan writer, poet, and translator. She has been writing on culture, literature and other general topics.
