Once Upon a Time - More Than Just Stories
Short stories may be brief, but they hold a powerful way of teaching us lessons through fiction. Folktales, alike, have been passed down through generations, often orally, to communicate values, preserve traditions, and make sense of the world around us.
“Oh, my poor Mathilde! Mine was an imitation! It was worth five hundred francs at most!”
One lesson that I have learned is the power of honesty, which is reflected in one of my favourite short stories that I read when I was younger, “La Parure” or “The Necklace” in English by Guy Maupassant (this excerpt is from ).
In this story, the protagonist lives a modest middle-class life in Paris with her husband, and they get an invitation to a formal ball. In light of the party, she buys a new dress and borrows a diamond necklace from her wealthy friend. This is where the story takes an interesting twist, which dramatically changes the course of their lives. The protagonist loses the diamond necklace and tries to pay back for it all her life without telling her friend about it. I’ve only read this story once, and it was enough to strike me because of the layer of lessons it carries. I would really recommend giving it a read!
Beyond teaching morality, short stories and folktales also stimulate imagination. Storytelling engages the mind in creating vivid mental images and is a valuable tool for education and communication. It can support the development of language skills, empathy, and creativity.
My name is Layecha Fidahoussen, and I am an MSc student at King’s College London and a research technician in the SPI Lab. Growing up, I heard countless stories and tales from my parents, relatives, and the communities around me. Coming from a South Asian and African background, storytelling was and continues to be deeply embedded in my culture. Whether metaphorical or literal.
As a child, I believed many of these stories wholeheartedly, and I would retell them to my friends. It wasn't only a form of entertainment; it was also a way of connecting with others. Especially when you're a child, everything sounds fascinating.
Now that I am older and wiser, I know these stories were made for entertainment, or to make sense of unexplainable phenomena. And with spooky season upon us, I thought there was no better time to revisit some of these stories and the power of storytelling.
Spooky Stories
Drawing from my own experience in my community in Madagascar, many folktales were passed down from our grandparents and originated in the villages where they grew up. I heard countless stories about ghosts and encounters with the dead from them. My grandmother, for example, used to tell me about doors mysteriously slamming in the middle of the night in her childhood home. Even writing about it now gives me goosebumps.
Tribal stories were another part of the stories that I heard from local people. I heard tales of tribes said to practise cannibalism, stories that were sometimes used to discourage people from taking dangerous paths while travelling to rural areas. Whether or not these stories were true, they served a purpose: they warned people of potential dangers when travelling.
Personally one of my favourite stories was about mermaids. My caregiver, who was originally from a major city in south-central Madagascar, used to tell me many stories, but this was one of my favourites. The story went something like this: at night, the mermaids would come ashore and transform into a human, somewhat like the Little Mermaid, if you are familiar with the story. They would enter the homes of strangers, possess their bodies and minds, and take control of their lives. In this way, they could live through one person before eventually moving on to another body, almost as though they were able to jump from one person to the next.
As mentioned, my caregiver did not live near the sea, so it felt like a mystery to both of us. She wholeheartedly believed the story, or at least made it feel that way. It is even more interesting to me now because of how mermaids are interpreted across different cultures and forms of entertainment. For example, in Homer’s Odyssey, the Sirens are depicted as dangerous, alluring creatures whose songs lure sailors toward their deaths.
Looking back, I realise just how diverse the stories I grew up hearing. They were influenced by religion, geography, culture, community beliefs, and sometimes the human desire to explain what we cannot understand, like ghosts.
Connecting Through Stories
As I briefly mentioned in the beginning, telling stories helped me form friendships when I was younger. As someone who enjoys reading them and hearing them, I wanted to share this passion with others. This is important because it helps people, such as myself, form meaningful relationships and helps us feel connected to our cultural background and community.
It also helps in bringing people together: when a story is told, we invite others into our own world of experiences, imagination, and perspectives. The listener can then relate their own experiences, or share a story of their own. In this way, storytelling becomes a shared experience rather than an individual one.
Finally, it lets us reflect on our experiences, emotions, and beliefs. As mentioned previously, the story of the necklace helped me understand the power of honesty, and monstrous stories helped me reflect when I travel to deserted areas. These lessons have stayed with me until now and influenced the way I understand and interact with the world around me.
Finding An Outlet Through Storytelling
From a mental health perspective, storytelling can serve as a tool to express emotions and process difficult experiences. Listening to someone else's story can help us understand perspectives different from our own and telling our own stories can make us feel heard and understood, which can give emotional support and a way to help cope with difficult experiences. This brings me to my next point. That stories help connect with people which can reduce feelings of isolation and strengthen a sense of belonging, which you can explore more of in my past article.
To me, folktales and short stories are more about the action and the lessons we learn from them. It is fascinating to me how such a simple action can have such a profound impact on how we understand ourselves and the people around us. From the folktales passed down by my grandparents to the stories I shared with my friends, storytelling has always been more than a form of entertainment, and through this piece, I hope I have highlighted that the stories we tell and the stories we inherit may be far more important than we realise.
