By Magdalene Krzeczkowski
Staff Writer
As Mardi Gras celebrations wound down on the evening of Tuesday, March 4, a small bunch of students, led by the Jesters of Yahweh women’s household, settled into a quiet corner of Kolbe-Clare Hall with Dr. Amy Roberts.
Dr. Roberts, a member of Franciscan University’s Department of Theology, has her undergraduate degree in literature and has always loved stories. She was therefore the perfect speaker to give a talk on “Storytelling and Evangelization.”
Dr. Roberts began by asking the huddle of students to name stories that had made a deep impression on them. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” “the Chronicles of Narnia” and the “Artemis Fowl” series were all mentioned.
A discussion then followed centering on the question, “What makes a story?” Dr. Roberts proposed one definition: “(a story is) a character who wants something and overcomes a conflict to get it,” which led to the question of important character types. Among those mentioned were the Hero, the Villain (or Antagonist), the Guide, the Sidekick, the Rival, and the Victim.
However, as the group noted, characters in and of themselves do not make a story; some conflict, leading to a change or development of some kind, is also necessary. “The greater the conflicts,” Dr. Roberts explained, “the greater the obstacles … the more enriching and rewarding the story is to read.”
She went on to say that, “We’re all called to be the hero of our own story, to be transformed from the victim to the hero.” This led to a discussion of realistic flaws in characters, and how this can lead to a character’s transformation. Junior education major, Peyton Voorheis, pointed out that in Jesus, the hero of the story of salvation, can be seen “a hero who takes on the flaw of the victim.”
Dr. Roberts continued the discussion of character, adding, “The villain isn’t stuck being the villain; the villain can become the hero.” However, she pointed out, there is still “an objective reality of good and evil that needs to be acknowledged.” In other words, it must be the character that changes, not the moral standard.
“A character may be portrayed as ambiguous,” Dr. Roberts explained, “but in the end you should see their strengths as strengths and their weaknesses as weaknesses.”
This, however, is not to say that a story devoid of a moral standard is therefore devoid of truth. “When there’s no agreed-upon standard of goodness, things deteriorate very quickly,” Dr. Roberts told the students. Readers can thus learn a valuable lesson from such stories about the importance of the moral standard.
As the talk came to a close, the students agreed with Dr. Roberts that in order to be a good story, a tale must teach the truth and have a purpose. They left with the knowledge that they were indeed living their own stories. In Dr. Roberts’ words: “We have some agency in our own story … we can co-author our story with God.”