One of the coolest things I learned in New Testament 1 last fall was the concept of structuralism, which says that all stories can be mapped onto a handful of deep structures, basic storylines that have existed pretty much since stories have been told. For example, Tolstoy said, "All great literature is one of two stories: a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town." That is a structuralist thing to say.
Fast forward a few months. I'm thinking about my final paper for Introduction to Christian Ethics. We can do pretty much whatever we want as long as we clear it with the professor. I think I want to write a paper about The Witch of Blackbird Pond. This book was one that affected me the most as a child, one of the first to make me feel real rage at the injustice of how the characters were treated. It came up twice in conversation within a week recently, so I decided to re-read it for the first time in a couple decades. Reading it as an adult is revealing. I realize part of why it upset me when I was younger. The book is about a young woman who doesn't fit in, who doesn't know how to fit in. She's from Barbados and lives in Puritan New England. She doesn't know the codes, she keeps breaking rules without meaning to, being more and more rejected by the people around her. This more than rings a bell. I didn't experience anything truly hateful or harmful when I was young (or since), but I never felt like I fit in, and sometimes I had no idea how to try.
I start thinking of other ideas for my paper in case the professor doesn't go for it. After all, some academics don't believe in the power of chapter books. So I come up with the movie Saved! and the movie-and-book Chocolat. Only after weeks of pondering does it occur to me that these are basically three versions of the same story: a woman doesn't fit in (orphan, stranger, pregnant teenager). Her locale is pretty strict and doesn't allow for a lot of easy fitting in (Puritan New England, close-knit small town, conservative Christian school). She struggles and hurts, but she finds a few other outsiders who help remind her of some important truths. Life isn't about fitting in. She becomes more comfortable with herself, due in large part to this new subgroup.
Fictive kinship is another concept from Bible classes, I think from Old Testament. It's basically what it sounds like: kinship, as in people who belong to each other. Fictive, as in not by blood or on paper. So I've called this deep structure the Fictive Kinship narrative.
Around the same time, I went to a conference and one of the presentations was about positive deviance. Everyone lives on the bell curve somewhere, with the majority of folks in the middle, just going along living their lives. One one end, you have negative deviance. People who don't fit in because they commit crimes or lack some abilities or don't relate well to others. Anyone whom a dystopian society would kick out. But then there's the other end. Also people who don't fit in, but it's because they are more creative, more thoughtful, more innovative and forward-thinking, perhaps more selfless and generous than is typical. These people might also be kicked out by a dystopian society, or at least silenced at times. The conference was about church, so in that context the presenters said we ought to seek out positive deviance in our communities and congregations, acknowledge it and applaud it, listen to the people and let them lead us. They also said everyone is positively deviant at some times, it's not like an elite subset of geniuses only. The protagonists in my cherished stories are positive deviants, thinking differently, feeling silenced or shunned for it, often trying to downplay the difference until something happens to make them feel more free.
I became a little obsessed with this deep structure, this positive deviance. Once I noticed it, I found it everywhere. Not every story fit so neatly, but the basics were there in almost all my favorites: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, the book of Ruth, Jesus and his friends, the early church, The Hunger Games, The Giver and its follow-ups. Mary Poppins and Office Space to some extent. Obviously there's something there for me, something these stories have to tell me. Many of them already have, but the meaning of a story is not easily exhausted. I have some ideas, none of them very developed:
-A pastor is typically someone who is slightly outside the culture and society she lives in, whose outsider status gives her special insight into that culture.
-I'm about to go and be a pastor (most likely, inshallah), in a place where I will certainly be a stranger for a while just by being new.
-We don't need to be surrounded by people who are just like us, and we don't need to be just like the people who surround us. But we do usually need a few, just a few, individuals who appreciate us and whom we appreciate the way they are. This fictive kinship is an important part of survival for anyone, especially those who do find themselves on the margins in some way.
-These stories are extremely popular. If a story about someone who doesn't fit in has so much success, doesn't that mean that a lot of people identify with it? A lot of people feel like they don't fit in either? I have a hunch that we all feel that way sometimes, that the few people who don't (or wouldn't ever acknowledge it) are the few with the most power. Maybe it's time to stop pretending we all fit in.
That's what I have at the moment, and I would love to hear your thoughts. Can you think of other stories with this structure or something like it? Does this resonate with you?
