Editor's Column

Thoughts on Narrative Acquisition: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Allegory

As often happens, my reading of an essay for this issue has intersected with some of my other reading in a way that has prompted me to think about issues raised by the various texts in ways that their authors, I'm sure, did not anticipate. Gary Johnson's essay proposes that we conceive of allegory as narrative and indicates that this conception will make us more attuned to "The Presence of Allegory" in modern fiction. He illustrates his point through a supple analysis of the way allegory functions within Philip Roth's ultimately nonallegorical novel, American Pastoral. Vivian Gussin Paley's In Mrs. Tully's Room (Harvard Univ. Press, 2001) tells stories in service of her case that narrative and performance are extremely valuable modes for pre-school education. Paley, long an advocate of having children tell and act out stories in the early grades, reports on her observations of Lillian Tully's use of children's storytelling and performance in Tully's childcare center in the Chicago area. Paley emphasizes that Tully's ability to create a safe, supportive environment allows Tully and the children to use their storytelling and performing to work through an impressive range of issues, from incorporating shy children into the group to resolving conflicts among them. What I found so striking, especially in connection with the general concerns of Johnson's essay, is how Tully's stories and the children's stories straddle the borders between fiction and nonfiction, fantasy and allegory. Consider, for example, this sequence of two stories told to the larger group of four-year-olds, the first by Allegra, a child who has until now felt left out of the group, and the second by Thea, an unusually attentive child.

Allegra: "Once upon a time there was a girl and no one noticed. . . . Then someone noticed. . . . But then someone tells her she's the real one, but she can't understand, but someone noticed how she feels. She feels sad" (18; the ellipses indicate places where Paley adds her comments).

Thea, who has been reading a book that all the children are familiar with called A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams, which tells the story of a daughter and her mother and grandmother saving money to buy a red chair with pink roses: "Once upon a time, no one noticed. Then the little girl noticed a pink flower. . . . It was on a red chair with pink roses. It was her chair but she didn't notice. . . . Then the girl noticed the red chair and it got more pinker and also pink roses on her dress and the little girl was happy because it was the same pink roses on the chair" (19; ellipses again indicate places where Paley adds comments).

I say that the stories straddle the borders of fiction and nonfiction, fantasy and allegory, because the "little girl" in both stories is clearly a transparent stand-in for Allegra, something that makes the events of Thea's story fictional, even fantastic (fantasy is a stronger element in other stories, especially ones with animals who speak English). Thea's story is also allegorical because the pink roses on the chair, borrowed from the community's beloved book, are a sign of that community; the matching of the roses on the chair with the roses on the dress, then, is a sign that the girl belongs in the community. Thea's story, in other words, is an allegory whose message to Allegra is that now everyone notices her and wants her to be part of the group. As Paley points out, this amazing sequence is eloquent testimony to the wonder and power of storytelling among very young children.

If Allegra's and Thea's stories also tell us something about "narrative acquisition"—that is, the process by which competent speakers acquire the ability to tell and interpret stories—it is that, during the early stages of acquisition, the borders between fiction and nonfiction may be highly...