The Wounded Storyteller

I am not quite sure how I feel about this book... I don't know if I like it and I don't know if I hate it. I understand what the author means when he says that a person who has suffered needs to create a story because this is very true. Every person searches for some way to communicate to themselves and to the people around them what their suffering entailed. Its an attempt to find some sort of justification or reason as to why it happened. Yet, there is a recognition that there really isn't a justification for suffering it is just what it is.

I do like how he pointed out that people will not always fully understand another person's story of suffering. Each person can only draw upon their own experience and go from there. It is their interpretations and stories of pain that help them grasp just a little of what another person is going through. You can say in so many different ways that you are in pain, but the other person isn't always going to understand the magnitude of pain you are suffering

I don't exactly agree with the obligation of the sufferer to tell their story. Rather I see it as the sufferer trying to find a reason for why it occurred. It isn't settling to live with the thought that as a human being you are subject to completely meaningless pain. Its an attempt for a person I guess to better grasp on to reality and life rather than fall into a state of constant pain. It would be their survival attempt. If they were to allow themself to become complete victims of pain they would cease to possess what makes them human. They would become part rather than whole. The stories do serve as a sort of phoenix affect. The individual wants to be reborn from the experience