Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey thorough the world.
Interpretation
Stories help to preserve and validate the achievements of individuals and their leaders in life.
In this quote, Chinua Achebe emphasizes the vital role that stories play in human experiences, particularly in reflecting and reinforcing the accomplishments individuals and their leaders perceive they have achieved. Stories act as a narrative tool that consolidates and celebrates these milestones, helping to create a collective understanding of one's journey and aspirations within the broader context of society.
In practice
In a speech about community achievements, one might include this quote to highlight the importance of shared stories.
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.
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.
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.
Religion is of general and public concern, and on its support depend, in great measure, the peace and good order of government, the safety and happiness of the people.
I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.
As a historian, he felt it his duty to respect everything that had ever been respected, except for the occasional statesman.
I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.
The great lie is that it is civilization. It's not civilized. It has been literally the most blood thirsty brutalizing system ever imposed upon this planet. That is not civilization. That's the great lie, is that it represents civilization.
I am Oz, the Great and Terrible," spoke the Beast, in a voice that was one great roar. Who are you, and why do you seek me?
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