The Importance of Storytelling

In her speech on stories, Canadian author Margaret Atwood gives her answer on why she believes that human beings need to tell stories.

The ability to tell stories, Atwood says, is a truly human one. While other species have the ability to communicate, none have the complexity of language that humans do. Stories are the melding of intellect and pure emotion, they exist between the two, just like humans do. She further elaborates in her speech on stories and their importance to humanity, that stories may have come about as an evolutionary adaptation. In order to tell others of dangers or tragedies, we had to explain and tell stories in order to fully get our message across, rather then using simple grunts and gestures. These crude forms of communication would have constituted as the first stories.

Stories are inherit to the human condition as Margaret Atwood explains, and their importance should not be easily dismissed.