Ong – Oral and Literate Storytelling

In chapter 6, Ong outlines some of the differences between oral storytelling and literate stories. They are constructed differently (if you can even use the word construct for both) and they each hold different values for what make good stories. This comes from the function and capacity of memory, and how it influences the expectations of an audience.

In oral cultures, the values important to storytellers and their audiences have more to do with the actual performance. Imagery, details, events can go in any order. Tellings are done in a lucid and free-flowing way in terms of plot, but conventions for rhyme or stanzaic form or rhythm might be more important. For that reason, organization usually manifests in the form of episodes and not plot, as literate cultures come to expect.

In literate cultures, a different set of criteria are held important. Order and organization are such expected characteristics of story that we are disgruntled and confused when they are missing. We come to recognize this in the form of plot. We want to be introduced to the characters, understand the conflict, see it build and then resolve. If the telling of that story goes in any other order, we get uncomfortable. Thoughts like "Where are they going with this?" cross our minds, and that deviance will derail us as listeners.

I would chalk these differences up to the fact that oral storytelling emphasizes the feelings of the experience being recounted, and the reader of story in literature needs to follow a formula to know what she is to expect when reading a story. This comes from training, and as with most things, when the order strays from what we learned in our training, it is difficult to interpret and follow. We have just become so accustomed to organization that it throws us off when we have to sift through the details on our own. And that may be much more natural to an oral listener, who depends more on the senses –feeding on sound, volume, expressions of the face, body language, etc.