The Collective Power of Story in Silko's "Storyteller"

실코의 「이야기꾼」에 나타난 이야기의 집단적 힘

Leslie Marmon Silko's Storyteller does not belong to a typical category of books, for it looks more like a family album with photographs, poems and Pueblo narratives as well as short stories authored by her. This 'book' without any chapters defies a traditional concept of books we are familiar with. In addition to refusing to be labelled as a conventional book, I argue, Storyteller defies the tradition of Western personal writing in that it shows the collective power of stories. That is, stories have the collective power which is impersonal beyond personal, internalized identity. It does not mean, however, the collective power comes from groups rather than individuals. It is not the conventional opposition of group and individual but that of group and collectiveness that matters here. I draw a distinction between group and collectiveness on the ground that the former actually groups individuals into categories with which individuals identify themselves. It is not group but collectiveness where stories find their power. "Storyteller," the first of eight short stories in the book, tells the story of an unnamed protagonist, a Yupik Eskimo girl, who takes revenge of her parents who died after drinking poisoned alcohol sold by a white storeman. There are four layers of stories in this short story. The first one is the old man's story of a blue glacier bear; the second one is a revenge story of the Yupik girl; the third one is a story told by the girl to the attorney after being arrested for the death of a storeman. And the final one is the story told to us by Silko, entitled "Storyteller." Although the structure of story within story resembles a technique of metafiction at a glance, it surely is a characteristic of Pueblo narratives in general, according to Silko. This kind of stories within stories refers to the collective power of story which, like a spider's web with many little threads radiating from the center and crisscrossing one another, is also a characteristic of stories on the Web today.