It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Interpretation
Storytellers shape our identities and histories through their narratives.
This quote by Chinua Achebe emphasizes the profound role of storytellers in shaping our understanding of identity and history. Storytellers not only convey events and experiences but also imbue them with significance, allowing survivors and future generations to derive meaning from their past. Without these narratives, the experiences of survival and the lessons learned would lack context and importance, illustrating the essential human need for storytelling in understanding our existence.
In practice
In a graduation speech, to inspire students to appreciate their own narratives.
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
An angry man is always a stupid man.
Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost.
Tithe in kind where your spirit is fed.
I wondered, as I wondered so often when I was that age, who I was, and what exactly was looking at the face in the mirror. If the face I was looking at wasn't me, and I knew it wasn't, because I would still be me whatever happened to my face, then what was me? And what was watching?
So many vows β¦ they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. Itβs too much. No matter what you do, youβre forsaking one vow or another.
Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"β here I opened wide the door; β Darkness there, and nothing more.
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