Rewriting the Story and the Stickiness of Narrative

Twenty years ago, I sat in the school gym on my tiny island where I live and listened to Margaret Atwood read from her upcoming book. So, it was a thrill last week when I was invited to be a visiting author at our small school’s literary festival. Fifty kids, kindergarten to grade eight, filed into the same gym and settled on the floor in front of my plush velvet chair, ready to hear what I had to say.

"Who knows the story of The Little Mermaid?" I asked, and every hand went up. I wanted to talk about the tradition of retellings, thinking that might inspire kids who struggled to know what to write.

Then I summarized Hans Christian Anderson's version, which leaves the mermaid dead at the end, instead of happily married to her prince. And there was some muttering amongst the kids.

"The Disney version is just one retelling of an older story," I told them.  

Then I told them about Perrault's version of Little Red Riding Hood. It’s almost 400-years-old and Little Red is dead at the end of the story.

At that, one of the grade one kids has had enough. He comes directly up to my chair, stands in front of me, in front of the rest of the school and demands I tell it properly. So, I told him the Brothers Grimm 200-year-old version, where a huntsman saves Little Red from the wolf and she returns home to live happily ever after with her mother.

But afterwards, I got to thinking about narrative, and how invested we get in the stories we hear, and we tell, whether those are our favourite fairy tales or the stories of our own traumas. He reminded me how we get caught up in the belief that there is only one version of the story. But that's not true. Stories can be told and retold many different ways. Our lives too.

When I write memoir, I try to be as honest as I can, try to tell the truth as I remember it, while recognizing that it’s just my truth. Someone else might have a different version of the story I'm telling. And recognize that in hindsight, allowing for the passage of time, even I might find a different ending to my story.