Blog 10

I find different information every time I reread a piece of writing. A person never picks up on every single detail when reading a piece for the first time. Life Stories by Julie Beck is about how people see their lives as narrative and tell their stories as a narrative. Beck explains how people see and express their narratives is how they develop their own identities. These were some of the ideas that I picked up the first time that I read Beck’s article. One part that I found really interesting when I read it the second time was how narrative changes depending on the age of the person. Beck describes how a child has more important things to pay attention to rather than narrative, like growing and development. At a young age children are just learning about stories and they pay more attention to straight plot rather than in depth details. Beck describes child as actors of their narrative, while adults and young adults are agents. A child is like an actor because they do not have much control of their narrative, like an actor acting out a part. While adults have a better understanding of what makes for a good narrative and have more control of what makes up their narrative. I think it is interesting how people can take different parts of their lives that shape their narrative. While reading a second time I also looked up some words that I didn’t the first time. One of those words was contamination which is the act of making something impure. In the context of the essay Beck is talking about how telling and developing a life story is important because it causes good mental health, while not can cause negative mental health. I feel like I didn’t really pick up on either of these two points when I first read the essay. I am glad that I got to read it again because I think it is really interesting how a person’s narrative and change and develop.        

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