The Act of Storytelling and Why it is Done

What is the purpose of telling a story?  In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Maryse Conde’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, and Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak!, the consistent theme of giving voices to those who would otherwise be silent reveals the true force behind the act of storytelling.  Indeed, whether it is oral or written, the supernatural nature of a story comes from its ability to resurrect the dead and reverse the laws of nature.  In the beginning and ending passages in Romeo and Juliet, the story of their tragic love is retold, therefore giving them a voice from beyond the grave.  With characters dead and alive co-existing in I, Tituba, the ongoing supernatural motif contributes to the power behind her story.  Within the short stories of Krik? Krak!, such as “Children of the Sea” and “Women Like Us”, the voices of the dead and silent speak of their lives through the means of a story.  Thus it is conceivable that the purpose of a story goes beyond the retelling of events, and that its true power lies in its ability to cross the barrier between life and death.

Every story has a beginning and a conclusion.  What is so special about them in the case of Romeo and Juliet?  The similarities begin the retrospective nature of the passages and the ability of these passage to bring the dead back to life.  In the prologue, the chorus begins with play with the following,

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life,
Whose misadventur’d piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;[1]