”But to say of someone under some one description (‘The prisoner of the Chateau d’If’) that he is the same person as someone characterized quite differently (‘The Count of Monte Cristo’) is precisely to say that it makes sense to ask him to give an intelligible narrative account enabling us to understand how he could at different times and different places be one and the same person yet be so differently characterized”
I chose this passage from MacIntyre’s writings because The Count of Monte Cristo is my favorite movie of all time, and it made the most sense to me. In The Count of Monte Cristo, the main character Edmond Dantes receives a letter from Napoleon after landing on his island to rescue his captain. Young and naive, he takes this letter back to France unknowing that it contains plans for Napoleons escape. His jealous best friend betrays him and tells the authorities, even though he knows Edmond is innocent. Edmond is sent to the Chateau D’If, an extremely treacherous prison in France. He stays there for 13 years and suffers the extreme cruelties of the prison. After befriending a priest that accidentally dug a tunnel into his room, they begin working together to dig themselves out, but Edmond only agrees if the Priest teaches him how to read, write, and sword fight. Over the next five years, Edmond grows into a much less naive person, since he has been taught many lessons and knows much more. The priest dies when their tunnels collapses on top of him. Edmond thinks quickly and gets into the burial cloth meant for the priest. The prison guards carry him out of the prison and throw him over the edge of a cliff into the water. From that point forward, Edmond begins his plan of revenge. He received a map from the priest of buried treasure. He finds the treasure and becomes rich so he can be wealthier than his enemies. He calls himself the “Count of Monte Cristo” and is respected by everyone for his great wealth, charisma, and knowledge.
I gave this summary of the story so that the passage from The Story Telling Animal could be put into perspective. MacIntyre is saying that it is reasonable to ask Edmond Dantes how exactly he could be the prisoner and the count, two very different narratives, and yet still be the same person inside and out. Our lives change dramatically over time. Different situations arise that change our narrative entirely. We may at one time be a simple, happy, kind Edmond Dantes, then the next we are thrown into an entire new narrative due to outside events that change our lives. We can become the vengeful, calculated Edmond Dantes without even realizing how much our life narrative has changed.
MacIntyre asks us what stories we are a part of. He says that “human beings are characters in enacted narratives. ‘Unpredictability and theology [ends or goals] therefore coexist as part of our lives’, ‘like characters in a fictional narrative we do not know what will happen next, but none the less, our lives have a certain form which projects itself towards our future’”.
We are all apart of a complexity of intertwined stories. We each have our own story, where we are the main character. While others are just side characters in our life, adding and taking away from our story. But it is important to remember everyone has their own story. Our actions may sometimes be irrelevant to us, but can impact someone else’s story significantly. We are just story characters in this life. Things get thrown at us from every which way, and how we deal with them and grow is our character development. We are unknowing of our fate and future, yet we go through it anyways, just like when you read a story book. The character follows through with his story.
Here is my example of how change greatly affected my story, and I had no knowledge of it beforehand, and no way to stop it or avoid it:
In my personal life, my narrative has changed many times. Some changes are more noticeable than others. In high school, for example, I came in as a freshman confident of my body, my personality, and all around confident in who I was. It hadn’t yet crossed my mind to think so negatively of myself or of anyone for that matter. I was trusting and happy. Over the year, a false rumor made by a boy who was upset that I did not feel the same way towards him led to multiple accounts of bullying. At the time I did not realize it was bullying since I still had a lot of friends and support. Still, this time in my life hurt me and taught me to be less trusting. My reputation was ruined and it hurt for awhile because I wanted people to know the truth, but everything I tried led to no avail. Over the next three years, I learned to stop caring what people said about me, because I knew my truth, and my loved ones knew my truth. And honestly, people leave you alone once they realize you do not care about them. By the end of high school, a few of the boys involved even had approached me to apologize for some of the things they did. I knew I really changed in high school, I could feel how different it was. I could see how not only me but everyone involved changed in some way. High school is a huge time for young people in changing their narratives, changing how they appear to others and how they feel inside. It is a time of growth. Of course, once I graduated I thought I had an idea of how my life would turn out. I didn’t realize how deep and complex life could be after high school, even by removing all the drama of friends knowing your personal business at all times.
The weekend after Valentines Day, 2020, my parents left to go up to Shasta for a weekend getaway. They were supposed to be gone for the weekend, return home, then we were all supposed to fly to Washington DC for my mom’s long-awaited business trip. Every time my parents would leave for the weekend, I was so excited. I got to chill out, sleep in, watch movies all day if I wanted. I was having a great time until my oldest sister came over and told us that mom was in the hospital. We were all scrambling to find out why, it was a very scary moment in my life. My mom had suffered from a seizure while out of town with my dad. She came home and was sent straight to the ER. Over the next week she was put through many different tests and scans, and she had to have brain surgery. She recovered very fast and well from the surgery, but a week later the test results came back, she had GBM, a very serious form of brain cancer. It was devastating news for my family. My boyfriend’s dad had died two years earlier from the same type of cancer.
Suddenly my narrative, and the narrative of my whole entire family and our lives together was changed. I used to imagine if none of this ever happened, we would have gone on that Washington DC trip together and had a great time. I think about how I would have felt on that trip, and the only thing I can come up with is that I was so naive. I had never lost a family member close to me, and I have never faced something so scary ever before. Before all of this, it felt like I was just going through the motions with my parents. I loved them dearly, but I didn’t cherish all the times we had. Now my mom’s life has changed forever and so has mine. I can feel myself growing into an adult during this quarantine. I am learning how to cook since my mom is now on a new diet and my dad needs help. I am learning how to clean more since my mom can no longer help. These tasks are no longer dreadful tasks, just a part of life. Things I have to do. I am now daily taking care of my mom and making sure she is always comfortable. These are not the only things changing about me. Inside I’m changing. I’m changing into the latter version of Edmond Dantes. The less naive to the cruelties of this world version. But I also hope that I am becoming more graceful, and more loving as well.
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