United in Conflict

            The question of whether or not there is a universal connection between all stories has incited insightful debates in the world of literature. Even Kurt Vonnegut, the famous author of Slaughterhouse- Five and many other novels and short stories, has weighed in on the issue. In his lecture, “The Shapes of Stories” he tracked the emotional fluctuations that occur in various novels. Then for each novel, he graphed his findings on the same “B-E” and “G-I” axes (with the “B-E” axis showing the chronological progression of the novel and the “G-I” axis showing level of positive or negative emotion) to compare their shapes. His graph is shown below: 

 From doing so, he uncovered a few main types of story shapes that every quality story ever written can fit into. As I watched a recording of this lecture, an interesting fact revealed itself: every graph crossed the “B-E” axis at some point and fell into the realm of “ill fortune”. This fall occurred due to a conflict or problem that a character faced. Since all story shapes, and therefore all stories, had this feature in common, conflict is a characteristic that makes every story similar. 

Of course, it makes sense that every story would have a conflict of some kind, since conflict sets events in a story into motion, However, even the kinds of conflict that are found in stories are similar. For example, In George Orwell’s 1984, conflict is created by the tensions between the mindset of Winston Smith and his surrounding society. There is a similar tension between Meursault’s opinions on life and the opinions on life that the society around him has, which causes problems for Meursault in Albert Camus’ The Stranger. On the surface, these stories seem very different, as one takes place in an eerie dystopian society, whereas the other is set in a more familiar 1940’s French Algeria. However, through their similar conflicts, both stories express the human desire for the freedom of personal opinion and the dislike of oppressive outside control. 

To summarize, we have discovered that every story contains similar conflicts, and conflicts reflect what values societies deem important. With this information in mind, it makes sense that all stories would be similar due to similar conflicts, since as humans we tend to value the same things. From ancient Rome to modern day and all around the globe, humans value freedom, self-discovery, friendship, and family amongst many other things. It is these shared values that manifest themselves in literature and unite the whole world under a few, similar stories.

Who knew conflict could do such a good job of uniting people?