Effects Of A Single Story

978 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The impact of a single story essay

A Single Story Can Damage Society Being exposed to one single story make people judge others without knowing them. People use to stereotypes based on a single story that they heard about an individual or a group of people. There are occasions in which there is only a single story that can make human beings understand reality. However, a single story can damage society, while a balancing story can clarify unknown situations.
A single story can damage society and change the point of view of human beings. The danger of a single story made me realize the answers to a lot of questions that I have asked to myself, such as, “Why does people use to judge others without even know them? Why are there so many versions of a single story?” Now that I …show more content…

For example, many people think that those from the Middle East are mainly terrorists. We have to end stereotypes and investigate before we stereotype or believe something about someone, because it can affect others. When we hear something and just affirm that and do not investigate about what we heard that leads to the single story effect. Adichie says, “All I have heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor” (3:43). This is a perfect example of the fact that we often believe and say to others something that we have heard about somebody, which is a horrible decision and impacts others. Affirming a fact before investigating is an error that we all have made at some time of our life. I hope that we all change that attitude and start to investigate and, after that, we affirm and speak. Adichie warns of the danger of the single story because an erroneous idea can change the point of view of any …show more content…

By hearing others and their individual stories, we can clarify and better understand both sides of the story. In a personal interview with Esnerfree Garcia, he said, “I was in the spelling bee group, and I won the first place. I felt very enthusiastic and I was looking forward to win the next completion” (Garcia). By listening to my classmate Esnerfree Garcia I was able to clarify unknown facts about him. The power of a balancing story can help human beings to clarify and learn new important facts about the person or culture. Furthermore, a balancing story can empower and humanize. A balancing story can help an individual or a culture, because it can give you a better understanding of what is the real story. Adichie states, “I was 19. My roommate was shocked by me. She asked me where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language”(04:12). This is further proof of the power of a balancing story. The author’s classmate clarified and learned a new fact just by listening to the story. Human beings should investigate and hear balancing stories. A balancing story allows a midpoint between the two different sides and creates an easily understandable idea of how the story really

Show More
Related

  • The Importance of Stories in "Borders" by Thomas King

    1442 Words  | 3 Pages

    Stories are a means of passing on information, acting as a medium to transport cultural heritage and customs forward into the future. In his essay titled "You'll Never Believe What Happened," King says that, "The truth about stories is that that's all we are” (King Essay 2). Contained within this statement is a powerful truth: without stories, a society transcending the limitations of time could not exist. Cultures might appear, but they would inevitably die away without a means of preservation. Subsequent generations would be tasked with creating language, customs, and moral laws, all from scratch. In a way, stories form the core of society's existence.

    Read More

  • The Danger Of A Single Story Essay

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    Chimamanda Adichie, in one of her eye-opening speeches, The Danger of a Single Story, provides the audience with a new insight into the negative impacts that can occur as a result of viewing a story from a single perspective and not putting in an effort to know it from all available viewpoints. Adichie in her simple, yet well-grounded speech, filled with anecdotes of her personal experiences effectively puts across her argument against believing in stereotypes and limiting oneself to just a single story using a remarkable opening, the elements of logos, pathos and ethos, repetitions, as well as maintaining a good flow of thoughts throughout the speech.

    Read More

  • Narratives In Jean Twenge's How To Tell A True War Story

    1618 Words  | 4 Pages

    Narratives are an important part of an essay as they create a sense of tone needed to describe a story or situation with ease. If the narrative is not correct, it can leave a false impact on the readers or viewers because it lacks the main tone of the story. Having a perfect narrative can not only enhance a story, but it can also prove evidence. In her essay, “An Army of One: Me”, Jean Twenge provides some of the best examples of how narratives enhance a story and she also emphasizes on how the tone of storytelling matters on the impact that the story would have on its readers or listeners. Apart from Twenge, Tim O’Brien also focuses on how the narrative of the story can help in understanding the truth and falsity of the story in his essay, “How to Tell a True War Story.” In addition to O’Brien, Ethan Watters also emphasizes on the narrative of cultural progress in his essay, “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan”, when he talks about the anti-depressants to be sold in Japan. All three authors agree to the fact that narrative, the art of telling a story or explaining a situation, has a major impact on the story and on how it is taken by the audience.

    Read More

  • Just Walk On By Brent Staples

    922 Words  | 2 Pages

    Our experiences are the ones those clarify the world around us. Every individual is different and time changes every individual. We find particular individual differences among the members of our own social group. How can we imagine not having differences with people of other social groups? as members of group change significantly. The ways we think, we hear, remember and the inferences we make creates stereotype. Stereotyping can build up an aggressive action upon the victim towards others and it can also lead to difficulty in making rational decisions on a person. Stereotyping builds up fear upon the victim towards the society.

    Read More

  • Single Story Essay

    1355 Words  | 3 Pages

    In 2009 Chimamanda Adichie gave a TED talk about the ‘danger of a single story’. A single story meaning, one thought or one example of a person becoming what we think about all people that fit that description, a stereotype if you will. In today’s America, I believe that we have all felt the wave of stereotypical views at some point or another. Adichie gives many relatable examples throughout her life of how she has been affected by the single story. Her story brings about an issue that all humans, from every inch of the earth, have come to understand on some level. A young child reading only foreign books, a domestic helper that she only perceived as poor. Her college roommates single story about Africans and her own formation of a single

    Read More

  • Stereotyping and Profiling Based Upon Religion

    1281 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fred Edmund Jandt (2003), the word “stereotype” was first used to show the judgments made about individuals on the origin of their racial background. Today the expression is more commonly used to pass on to events made on the basis of a groups association. Psychologists have attempted to give explanations of stereotyping as errors that our brains make in the judgment of other people that are related to those mistakes our brains make in the view of illustration illusions. When information is blurred, the brain frequently reaches the incorrect conclusion. (p.77)

    Read More

  • The Danger Of A Single Story?

    978 Words  | 2 Pages

    The word danger probably makes you want to turn away and stop doing whatever it is that you are doing. Well, what do you do when you see the words, “The Danger of a Single Story?” These words had me nervous about what I was going to be watching. However, there was a lot of information that was explained throughout this 20-minute TED talk from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This paper will explore compelling ideas she mentioned that relate to things I have experienced when I went to another culture, the risks of telling a single story narrative in intercultural interactions, ways to protect myself from single story misconceptions, and how I was able to see how a single story might affect the way I communicate with others in different cultures.

    Read More

  • The Danger Of A Single Story

    1108 Words  | 3 Pages

    What does the speaker refer to when speaking about the danger of a single story? What are examples she provides?

    Read More

  • Flannery O'Connor's Use of Religious Allegory

    2386 Words  | 5 Pages

    Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”

    Read More

  • Experiences And Challenges In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

    897 Words  | 2 Pages

    We simultaneously believe, however, that society is disinterested in an individual’s story. One outcome of this dilemma is that public knowledge can only be built from “something real, some firm ground for action that would lead…onto the plane of history…” (507). In other words, the stories that are remembered are concrete. Individual’s stories are filled with uncertainty and emotions that continuously evolve. Society is too careless to comprehend this complexity. This leads to the other outcome, the narrator suggested, being our inability to understand one another. Our distinct experiences are critical elements in shaping our way of being; yet, they are unknown and figuratively we are

    Read More

  • Language, Gender, and Culture in Society

    1684 Words  | 4 Pages

    In many circles of the world, various groups of people distinguish themselves from one another through religion, language, culture, and sometimes gender. People also develop stereotypes about a particular group of people in order to identify them. However, most of the time, these stereotypes hold true for only some members of a group. Sometimes, these stereotypes are just plain misconceptions that do not even apply to the group it claims to. Stereotypes are placed on people because it is a way to easily identify what type of person or ethnicity an individual is. At one point in time, these stereotypes may have been true; however, in today’s modern society, most of these stereotypes are outdated and false, which leads them to turn into misconceptions. Usually, stereotypes are utilized to humiliate and degrade the person or group; they also do not provide any beneficial outcomes. Stereotypes focus on how a particular group acts because of the radical ideas and actions of the few, how a particular group looks, or how that group is physically lacking in some way. These stereotypes often lead to conflicts because the group does not appreciate the way it is being perceived. Seldom are the stereotypes placed on a group of people truthful and accurate. Some hardly even apply to the particular group people it claims to. It is true that how people are perceived has a big impact on how other individuals interact with them; however, people are not perceiving these groups correctly.

    Read More

  • The Danger Of A Single Story

    730 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the world, people have always and will always judge each other based on their skin tone, their accent, their home country or other obvious features that we immediately see or hear about them. We often formulate our opinions of these people based on our first impressions of them. In 2009, Civil rights activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie uses her time on her Ted-Talk to deliver her resonating speech “The Danger of a Single Story.” During her world-renowned speech, Adichie discusses human relationships, how we, as humans, interact with one another and treat each other. Adichie establishes her argument with one powerful metaphor describing common stereotypes as ‘single stories’ to demonstrate how people are affected by being judged based

    Read More

  • Imagination And Why We Tell Stories, By Lisel Mueller

    1622 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mueller expresses how stories allow children to achieve the impossible, such as flying when they are incapable and discovering the unknown. Stories give a life to the people who are unable to live, and that is one of the reasons why imagination is so essential to our world. The sharing of tales bring genuine joy to people without the need of materialistic items; it gives people the chance to relate to the author on a common ground. The sense of shared joy and mutual connection brings people closer together and expands on relationships. People begin to feel as if they are apart of an imagined community, which is a community in which people perceive themselves to be apart of, through common interests or relations from media or works of literature. Communities such as these allow people to connect with each other, despite never crossing paths. It allows the birth and the strengthening of relationships, for when people begin to converse with others, the first thing they do is find common experiences or interests that they share. In addition, a quote from Mueller, herself, adds to why we tell stories: “Because the story of our life becomes our life. Because each of us tell the same story but tell it differently, and none of us tells it the same way twice.” Tales are devised with the incorporation of the narrator’s imagination; it is a way to

    Read More

  • The Drummer Boy of Shiloh

    1373 Words  | 3 Pages

    A narrative is specified to amuse, to attract, and grasp a reader’s attention. The types of narratives are fictitious, real or unification or both. However, they may consist of folk tale stories, mysteries, science fiction; romances, horror stories, adventure stories, fables, myths and legends, historical narratives, ballads, slice of life, and personal experience (“Narrative,” 2008). Therefore, narrative text has five shared elements. These are setting, characters, plot, theme, and vocabulary (“Narrative and Informational Text,” 2008). Narrative literature is originally written to communicate a story. Therefore, narrative literature that is written in an excellent way will have conflicts and can discuss shared aspects of human occurrence.

    Read More

  • Social Norms In Chimamanda Adichie's The Danger Of Single Story

    1335 Words  | 3 Pages

    Men are always stronger and smarter than women; all teenagers are rebels and rarely follow parents’ instructions; all Chinese are good at math—all of these statements are spread through the entire world although most people know they are not completely true.  On the opposite viewpoint, when we evaluate those statements, it is controversial to judge and blame the individuals who spread these kinds of information out and keep saying them over and over again, because most of these things are partly true. This is that we call stereotypes, “which are types of generalizations, or assumptions, that people make about the characteristics of all members of a group, based on an image about what people in that group are like” (Burgess).Also, Chimamanda Adichie, the famous renowned writer, scholar, and the speaker of “The Danger of Single Story” in Ted Talks, once said, “stereotypes are created by single stories, the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but they are incomplete.” At this point, single stories are the pattern of the lack of understanding, uncorroborated assumptions, and some special cultural myths. Thus, at a certain level, stereotyping is an approach where people show their misunderstanding with each other based on their own personal, regional, and cultural perspectives, which is the consequence of the institutionalization and socialization of their environmental backgrounds.

    Read More

More about Effects Of A Single Story

Open Document