For the Story Teller: Story Telling and Stories to Tell

by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

You clasp your friend’s hand. You look deep into her eyes. You note a similar perfume permeating her clothing that you knew in former years. She speaks to you, and you recognize the old, familiar quality of tone in her voice. Then the miracle happens, and your friend’s name finds its way to your lips. It is Mrs. B——. You had not really forgotten Mrs. B’s name. It had been stored away in a cobweb-hung corner of your mind together with its mental associates; the touch memories of her hand clasp, the odor memory of her perfume, the sound memory of her voice. As you again experience these touch, odor and sound stimuli, Mrs. B’s name rises in their wake like a phœnix long buried in the ashes of forgetfulness.

Memory is a process of association of ideas. Not repetition of an idea, but surrounding it with a host of witnesses gives it permanency in the mind.

To a greater extent than can possibly be estimated does this associative quality of memory hold in the case of children. We wish to teach a kindergarten child that a certain type of flower is known as a rose. We do not repeat to him over and over again, or ask him to repeat to us, in order to fix this fact in his mind—“This is a rose. This is a rose.” Instead, we ask him to smell of the flower, note its color, the shape of its petals, its peculiar, thorny stem, its leaves. We help the child to draw a picture of a rose. We ask him to show us all the roses he can find as we take him to walk in the garden. Then, when the child has the flower’s color, odor, feeling, form and garden environment as a crowd of mind witnesses to prove its individuality, we say “This is a rose,” and the child is very apt to remember the flower.

A well-constructed child’s story has the associative quality that characterizes the mental process of memorizing. It has one central theme; an act of heroism, a nature fact, a bit of natural history, a note of the fantastic or the humorous and around this central theme are grouped the story associates; the dialogue, the description, the sensory elements, the surprise of the climax, all of which fix indelibly in the mind this central theme around which the story is written.

Every well told story means an added possibility of a recall in the child’s mind and strengthens the general process of memory.

Laura Richards’ story of “The Pig Brother” illustrates the type of story for which the story teller should search in order to train a child’s memory. The theme of the story, the idea that is to be made a fixture in the child’s mind, is that of the value of cleanliness, and order in life. The treatment of the theme is constructive, a process of building up scenes and blocking out unessentials to strengthen and make permanent the theme in the child’s mind.

“There was once a child who was untidy,” the story begins.

With no wasting of time over details the child who hears the story is introduced to the theme. There follows a bit of description explaining the kind of untidiness of the little story hero, how he left his toys and boots scattered about his play-room, spilled ink and covered his pinafore with jam. Then the child is confronted by the Tidy Angel who tells him to go out in the garden and play with his brother while she puts his nursery back into its former state of orderliness. The child goes out to the garden but he is in a condition of wonder in regard to this brother whom he is to seek. He meets a squirrel in the garden path, and he asks it if it is his brother, but the squirrel denies all relationship to the child because of his untidiness. Then the child meets a wren, and asks it the same question, which the bird also indignantly denies because of the child’s untidy appearance. The child then interrogates the Tommy Cat who scorns all thought of relationship to him, telling him to go and look at himself in a mirror. The climax of the story is found when the child meets a pig who promptly claims relationship with him and causes the child to go back to his play-room resolved to be tidy and orderly in the future.

The story has a memory value for children because it presents one idea with a number of related associates. The story theme of the unpleasant results of being untidy is never lost sight of, but is presented over and over again in a series of related scenes so differentiated, however, by their contrast as to make them permanent in the child’s mind. We may take these different scenes in the order in which the author presents them, discovering that each forms a stone in the whole structure, differing in their value but all taking form and color from one theme.

Scene 1. The child hero is banished from his play-room and his toys as a result of his own acts.

Scene 2. The child finds that he has no part in the outside world of little wild creatures, also because of his untidy habits.

Scene 3. For the same self-inflicted reason, he is disowned by his friends, the birds.

Scene 4. His house friend, the cat, disowns him because his habits of personal cleanliness do not accord with her standards.

Scene 5. The child finds the natural consequence of his untidiness in his welcome by the despised pig which brings about his resolve to be clean and orderly, hereafter.