A Structural Analysis of Personal Experience Narratives, the Federal Writers‘ Project to Storycorps

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: A STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE NARRATIVES, THE FEDERAL WRITERS‘ PROJECT TO STORYCORPS by Megan M. Dickson B.A. May 2007, Utah State University A Thesis submitted to The Faculty of Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts May 16, 2010 Thesis directed by John Michael Vlach Professor of American Studies and of Anthropology © Copyright 2010 by Megan Marie Dickson All rights reserved ii Dedication This thesis is dedicated to the experiences we each have and share every day— in the park, over the phone, and sometimes even to a government employee (circa 1937), or with a loved one in a cozy StoryCorps sound booth in New York City. To my husband— Perry Dickson—without you, your love and strength, your championing and cheerleading this story would never have been possible. To my parents—Mona and Ken Farnsworth, and Robin Dickson—thank you for your unending love, support, encouragement, and belief. To my son Parker, whose story has only just begun, your vigor and verve for life already bring constant adventure and joy beyond measure. iii Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge and thank the faculty and staff of the American Studies department at The George Washington University. A special thanks to Maureen Kentoff—the most fabulous muse in American Studies Executive Assistant history for helping to navigate the sometime frightful waters of university protocol, and sharing ways to succeed as a non-traditional student; John Michael Vlach—my faithful advisor; Melanie McAlister—Director of Graduate Studies who administered my comprehensive examination; Phyllis Palmer—a woman whose enthusiasm and intellectual spark lit up an otherwise apathetic paper proposal; and Thomas Guglielmo, Chad Heap, Terry Murphy, and Elizabeth Anker—for their teaching prowess and academic acumen. iv Abstract of Thesis American Existence: A Structural Analysis of Personal Experience Narratives, The Federal Writers‘ Project to StoryCorps This paper argues that the personal experience narrative contains and maintains structural integrity in the form of carefully formulated narrative functions. These functions of narrative structure, manifest over time, underscore the traditional nature of personal experience narratives. The analysis conducted is based on a selection of narratives from the Federal Writers‘ Project life histories and from StoryCorps project interviews, and modeled after the seminal study of Labov and Waletsky‘s ―Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience‖ (1967). In a sample of ten narratives, the functions—orientation, complication, evaluation, resolution, and coda—are extracted from the narrative clauses in order to obtain analytical referents to examine not only the structure of the individual narratives themselves, but to substantiate the claim that the narrative structure is a traditional underpinning of personal experiences. The traditional nature of American personal experience narratives is thus displayed over a span of seventy years. I begin by placing these two recording initiatives in context of their historical cultural atmosphere to indicate the climate out of which the narratives came. Such findings also suggest an American experience rooted in cultural constructs, which manifest themselves in themes of individuality, responsibility, happiness, change and choice. This study concludes by arguing that the narratives also constitute representative examples of the American experience through the themes they employ, which may someday serve as a basis for a narrative theory of American personal experience narratives. v Table of Contents Dedication …………………………………………………………………………iii Acknowledgements .….…..………………………………………………………..iv Abstract of Thesis ………………………………………………………………….v Table of Contents ………………………………………………………………….vi List of Tables ………………………………………………………………………vii Chapter 1: Introduction ……………………………………………………………. 1 Chapter 2: Historical Context ……………………………………………………… 7 Chapter 3: Narrative Analysis …………………………………………………….. 22 Chapter 4: Conclusion …………………………………………………………….. 54 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………… 66 vi List of Tables Table 1 …Richard Dorson‘s Personal Experience ………………………………. 32 Table 2 …Orientation ……………………………………………………………. 36 Table 3…Complication …………………………………………………………... 40 Table 4 …Evaluation ……………………………………………………………... 43 Table 5 …Resolution ……………………………………………………………… 47 Table 6 …Coda ……………………………………………………………………. 51 vii Chapter 1: Introduction Here the profound lesson of reception, neither preference or denial; The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas‘d, the illiterate person, are not denied; The birth, hasting after the physician, the beggar‘s tramp, the drunkard‘s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics, The escaped youth, the rich person‘s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple, The early market-man, the hearse, the moving furniture into the town, the return back from the town, They pass—I also pass—anything passes—none can be interdicted; None but are accepted—none but are dear to me. -Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road My introduction to StoryCorps came in what I would now describe as a fairly common personal experience in terms of these narratives. Friday morning, my husband and I rush from our home for another harried commute into D.C. We jump into the car; I turn over the engine. Seat belts fastened, we turn up the volume on NPR‘s Morning Edition. We reverse out of the driveway as the familiar voice of Rene Montaigne introduces, ―Time now for StoryCorps. This project is traveling the country collecting interviews. Many people have been telling their stories about loved ones. Today we‘ll hear from a family in Virginia‖: My name is Gregg Korbon. There‘s a Little League baseball field in Charlottesville called Brian Calvin Korbon field, and I would like to tell the story of how it got its name. When Brian was getting ready for his ninth birthday he said that he would never make it to double digits meaning ten-years-old. We didn‘t understand that because he was healthy, but he did not want to celebrate his birthday. Well over the next several months he said that he wanted to have a belated birthday party. There were several things he did that we didn‘t know about till later, but he wrote letters to his friends. And he put a sign on the door that said, ―Brian‘s on a trip, don‘t worry about me.‖ Then the next morning was his party. The kids came for the party. He didn‘t want any gifts. But his little girl friend gave him a kiss, and his boy friend wrote a song for him. And then it was time for Brian to play little league. Now he always was afraid of the ball, he was the littlest kid on the team. But when Brian got there he was fearless. He was charging after the ground balls and just having the best time. It was his first time up at bat and he got walked to first base. The next little boy hit a triple. Brian ran around the bases, crossed home plate, he was the happiest little boy you ever saw. He gave me a high five and went into 1 the dugout and he collapsed. The coach brought him out. And I‘m an anesthesiologist, that‘s what I do is resuscitate people, but something inside told me he wasn‘t coming back. After he died, I went to the ball field to get my car, and it was the most beautiful spring day I have ever seen. There was another Little League game playing when I went back. And I was looking at the other kids playing, and all of a sudden everything got very clear. And I had the sense that if I could bring Brian back it would be for me, not for him—that he had finished. Any unfinished business was just mine. Rene concludes, ―Gregg Korban with his wife Kathryn, at StoryCorps. Their entry will be archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. See pictures of Brian and his parents at npr.org.‖1 The broadcast ends and I find myself crossing Memorial Bridge wiping tears from my face. My husband‘s eyes glisten; the emotional impact was palpable. Why? What is it about personal experience narratives that capture an audience so expertly? Aside from the masterful editing job of NPR‘s morning edition team, is it the repeated revelation of a shared humanity, or our ever-present need for stories ―to tame the chaos of the world, to give meaning‖ as Barbara Myerhoff suggests?2 Is it the insight into individual veins of personal belief, lessons or proverbs that may be passed on generationally, the idea that these stories can almost resurrect specific moments or memories again and again making time seem less linear and more organic, or a combination of all these? Or could it be that this type of personal experience narrative has become so inculcated into patterns of conversational discourse that it has taken on a power long associated with other narrative forms of folk speech, the facet of tradition? 1 Gregg and Kathryn Korban. interview at StoryCorps, NPR’s Morning Edition, 88.5WAMU FM, November 20, 2009. 2 Barbara Myherhoff, Number Our Days, (New York: Dutton, 1978), 33. 2 Answers to these questions reach to a larger national treasury of everyday American life captured and preserved by two definitive recording movements—the Federal Writers‘ Project of the New Deal era and the contemporary non-profit organization StoryCorps. The archival record of both crusades is housed in the Library of Congress, captured on a variety of media—from old wax cylinders and type-written pages, to records, tapes, CDs, and DVDs. Now even digital facsimiles of these personal experience narratives are accessible through the Library‘s web server.3 These recordings chronicle an epic search to define America, an ongoing quest to sift through individual experiences and seize perhaps a more universal and shared essence of what it means to be American. Personal experience narratives are stories told in everyday talk about our individual experiences—whether we are sharing the mundane happenings of an ordinary day or extraordinary events that mark our existence.

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