Storms and Stories — While I was watching the television coverage surrounding the arrival of Hurricane Florence, I heard an anchorperson say, “Hurricane Florence is taking aim at North Carolina.” The scientific side of my brain immediately objected to this comment because of the implication that Hurricane Florence is sentient and is intentionally making decisions as to where it plans to wreak havoc. However, as I reflected on this comment, I realized that the anchorperson was simply following an age-old tradition of turning storms into characters in stories.
In the realm of mythology, there are countless stories about storm gods. In fact, the word hurricane is based on Huracán, the Mayan god of the storm. Other storm gods include the Norse god Thor, the Greek god Poseidon, the Egyptian god Set, and the Japanese god Futsushi. All of these storm gods are characters in stories associated with severe weather. In some cases, they take the form of a storm. In other cases, they wield the power of a storm. In all cases, they provide narrative contexts that help people better process the phenomena of hurricanes and other dangerous storms.
Two members of our English Department have engaged in scholarly research on the relationship between storms and stories. Toward the beginning of her career, JuliAnna Ávila conducted an extensive project with children displaced by Hurricane Katrina in which she helped these children use digital storytelling to express their experiences related to this catastrophic storm. JuliAnna published the results of this research in an edited volume titled Research on Sociocultural Influences on Motivation and Learning. Paula Connolly published an article titled “Surviving the Storm: Trauma and Recovery in Children’s Books about Natural Disasters” in Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature. In response to an email message that I sent to her asking for more information about this article, she wrote: “I examined three types of children’s books (including non-fiction first person accounts) that depicted the effects of Katrina (2005) and the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004). The essay explored the books’ narrative/visual tensions representing death and trauma while also addressing the resilience necessary to survive catastrophic disasters.”
Both JuliAnna and Paula focused their research on stories associated with 21st-century storms, but their research has points in common with the ancient myths about storm gods. What JuliAnna, Paula, and the ancient myths all tell us is that we need the structure of stories in order to cope with storms. That’s why we give hurricanes human names and use anthropomorphic language when we talk about them. Meteorologists can tell us the science behind hurricanes, but it takes storytellers to help us understand how such storms shape our experiences.
Kudos — As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of the English Department. Here is the latest news:
Bryn Chancellor was a featured author last week at the On the Same Page Literary Festival. She gave a reading and talk at the Ashe County Public Library in West Jefferson, NC.
Paula Eckard recently published an article titled “Queerness, Opioids, and Mountaintop Removal: The Politics of Destruction in The Evening Hour” in a special issue of the South Atlantic Review on political literature. The issue can be found at this link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/da97r8wfn2y3w17/SAR_83.3.pdf?dl=0
Quirky Quiz Question — When the Norse god Thor isn’t creating lightening and thunder, he enjoys traveling across the sky in a chariot pulled by two large animals. What sort of animal pulls Thor’s chariot?
Last week’s answer: Fiddler on the Roof