About this Piece

My target audience was just the general public. I wrote it in a way that I think would actually get published somewhere. Obviously, it probably wouldn’t but I made the effort to use more formal language than what I did in my narrative piece. I tried to make it sound very professional in some parts so it looks like a pro wrote it.

Honestly the most meaningful thing I took away from the phase might actually just be what I read in Kevin’s paper. He said creativity should be used not only when creating but also when absorbing. I’m used to just going along with whatever teachers say about a text and not thinking twice about it, so from now on I’ll probably always have my own thoughts on pieces in the back of my mind and not letting the teacher or classmates define what’s the right way to think about a text. But it also goes into looking at paintings too, since those are really subjective. But that’s probably not useful to me since I don’t really care about paintings.

How Storytelling Changed A Life

Here with me is someone whose life has been impacted numerous times by storytelling, Kevin. His first taste of a great story was in the early stages of childhood. He and his brother would often play with LEGOS, which by itself doesn’t sound too unique. But they wouldn’t just make the sets from the boxes and call it a day. They made their own characters and plots to design a sort of short film. They especially loved making fight scenes with dramatic effects and cool explosions. Kevin vividly remembers scenes with skyscrapers and helicopters where characters would have to jump out of helicopters into an enemy base with crowds of people watching from below. Sometimes there would be scenes where they had to jump off of crashing buildings into the helicopter to escape. On top of all that, they also incorporated supernatural powers/phenomena that would twist the plot in unexpected ways. They loved making these stories so much that they even thought that one day they could successfully direct their own movie.

Kevin’s favorite show is One Piece, an anime that follows a pirate and his crew on their quest to find a legendary treasure. His dad first introduced him to this show when he was about 11, but it quite literally changed the way he viewed the world. Before One Piece, he said “the world was just dull”. Once he got into the story of One Piece, life got cooler for him. His favorite thing to do was mimicking the characters that he would see on the screen. He would punch the way they punch and kick the way they kick to really imagine himself in the story. But the cherry on top of his One Piece experience was being able to share it with others. First, his dad shared it with him, then he shared it with children from his school. He loved to sit and chat with his friends about One Piece because as kids, they had creative minds and the story of One Piece nourished that creativity to the fullest. 

One of the biggest reasons he loves One Piece today is because it’s not as silly as it seems on the surface. Under the cover of cartoony animations and funny dialogue is a story that touches on problems that societies and people have been facing for hundreds if not thousands of years. Kevin spoke about how the show incorporated things like racism, segregation, and many other struggles.

Kevin talks about all of the different mediums in which stories can arise, such as books, shows, and even just normal everyday conversations. His favorite book of all time is the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Although he said doesn’t know exactly why he loves it so much, I have a pretty good idea since I read it as well. The series features Greg Heffley, a middle schooler just going through everyday struggles that a teenager faces in and out of school. Since Kevin loves storytelling so much, he was probably invested in the funny but realistic depictions of teenager life in the book since he was a teenager himself when he read it.

 One of his other favorite books of all time is The Great Gatsby. And although he doesn’t actually remember much from the story itself, I could definitely hear the passion that he had for it while conducting the interview. When he read it in high school, he felt that he was Jay Gatsby (the main character) and he felt like he was going through all of the events himself. This was a surprise to not only me but also Kevin because he stated that he didn’t actually like reading at all. But something about the story just captivated him so much that the love for storytelling overcame his hate for reading. And a big part of that was his English teacher that was guiding him through the book during class. Kevin even went as far as to say that he wouldn’t have liked the book had it not been for his teacher’s instruction. This goes into something that Kevin actually wrote in his narrative piece, relationships are important for stories. Although this is a general statement, the meaning is clear in this scenario. Without the relationship with his teacher, his love for The Great Gatsby would never have flourished. This makes me wonder how many people are missing out on great stories just because they don’t have the right person to lead them, whether it be with a recommendation from a friend or valuable class time with a teacher.

He then talks about his experiences with language and how he was able to speak a second language just as well as someone who was fluent. Kevin was born in America but his family spoke Spanish. Even though his parents tried to make him learn Spanish when he was young, he didn’t see the significance of it since he only ever saw people speaking English here in America. However, his mindset on this subject changed as he grew older. He wanted to have that increased understanding of his family members. He stated that once he learned how to speak Spanish properly, he felt like he wasn’t “lacking” anymore. It also just feels good to be able to communicate with people that aren’t able to speak English, so he likes making others feel like they’re included as well.

He also talks about creativity and how it’s an important part for creating as well as digesting literature, which I thought was interesting because usually people only associate creativity with creating, not understanding. Most people believe there is only one way to view a piece of literature and usually just go with what the masses believe, but Kevin stated that people always have individual freedom to choose how they see a text and think for themselves about what the actual meaning is.

Kevin makes use of the 2nd person point of view and switches back and forth between 2nd and 1st person point of view. This is a more slight rhetorical device, but he uses it seamlessly in such a way that it doesn’t even seem like we’re switching when reading. It also creates an interesting dynamic in his piece where the reader is reading about his experiences, but then all of a sudden we are forced to think back about our own similar experiences because it feels like he is speaking directly to us and kind of asking if we can relate in any way. Kevin’s purpose with this strategy was to simply show that what he was experiencing is relatable. And his ideas are able to be understood by every human alike as they are very broad, so there isn’t any specific audience that he is trying to appeal to. Something I found interesting was the line “When you approach a text with a creative mindset, you’re more likely to discover deeper meanings and symbolism, because it is harder to understand a text when you approach it from a different language.” Instead of using “I”, he uses “you”. Instead of just stating his experience flatly, Kevin gives us advice on how to read so that we can learn from his mistakes.