2.2 Form and content of parables
Marshall McLuhan in “Understanding Media” makes a number of arguments pertinent to the study of parables as a form. The first is that the form of communication has proliferate psychic consequences that are independent of content. To briefly illustrate, reading a play in the quiet of one's home and attending a live performance of the same play will be different psychic and social experiences. At home the ear is irrelevant, while at the live performance the ear must share the play with the eye. The home is private and individual whereas the live performance is public and socially shared. Only at the level of meaning might the alternative forins merge, but even there, different meanings may be derived from the “same” experience [23, p.115-124].
A culture may be at least partially defined as the sum of its communicative forms. Oral cultures, where speaking, listening and remembering predominate, differ from print cultures where writing, reading, and record keeping occur. Parables look like an old form since they still lend themselves to oral presentation. Being a form that has fallen into disuse outside religious circles, the parable looks alien, but being strange it also arrests attention, and excites curiosity. New forms facilitate certain social relationships while rendering others obsolete [12].
Parables as a form can be better understood against this background of illustrations. They are stories, of moderate length, amenable to repeated readings in one short sitting. They surprise the reader, arrest the regular “processing” of information and, in so doing, irritate the psyche. The reader cannot quite let go, because letting go is usually conditioned on closure which in the case of a true parable cannot be reached [13].
Thus when the parable is officially “ended”, the reader cannot serenely put the parable to rest. It sits in the psychic craw as a piece of unfinished business.
Parables are cool, inviting and participatory, unless sabotaged. For instance, Faulkner draws the reader into the story, but once in, the participation of the reader begins, rather than ends. The more powerful the parable, the more furious the involvement, the more sustained and profound the impact [36, p.56-59]. Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life.
Readers can feel their minds bend as they try to follow the above dialogue. A persistent immersion of students and teachers in parables would make them different as individuals and different in the ways they respond to each other. If this seems to be parabolic megalomania and absurd, perhaps the later material in the paper will make it seem less so.
Marshall McLuhan distinguishes several features of parables [31]:
1. The parable allows deep communication between the narrator and the reader. The parable begins “benignly”, disarming readers, drawing them in, and encouraging them to compare features of the story to their own experiences. They identify with a certain character or characters, and with the characters encounter dilemmas or unanticipated circumstances that call for choices. At this point the story teller departs and readers must tap their own resources, moving more deeply into self examination.
2. The parable involves indirect communication that provokes self discovery. Direct communication conveys information and, by reference to authorities, endorses certain lines of thought. By contrast, a parable presents a moral knot which the reader must untie by inward reflection and choice. Whereas direct communication creates observers and listeners, indirect communication creates participants and action. Those who prefer to “learn about the world” in a direct and controlled way, lose control of their responses when they encounter the parable. The parable carries them, willingly or unwillingly, inward toward undiscovered dimensions of self.
3. Experiences with indirect communication cultivate the capability for developing the self. Whereas direct learning does not change the capability of a person (learning simply adds to knowledge) indirect communication jolts the person out of mental routines once and for all. Rather than a simple change in information there is a change in consciousness. Like the seeds of the sower in the New Testament, the parable does not always fall on receptive ground, but even in such instances, the person is placed on notice that a world outside regular understanding exists.
5. And the last is that parables are memorable and amenable to oral tradition.
V.A. Harvey and H. Bergson distinguish some more features of parables [3, 20]:
1. Generalization of the meaning - the situations described in the parable can be applied in real life.
2. The structure of the parable reflects the world sensation of the people who started to learn about the world.
3. An action has a parable character only when it is said in it: act like this and all will be well.
To understand the parable correctly we should take into account the following points:
First, it is not necessary that everything described in the parable has really happened. Moreover not all the actions described are good. The purpose of the parable consists not in exact transmission of an action, but in revelation of highest spiritual powers.
Second, it is necessary to realize the purpose of the parable that can be understood from the preamble or from the circumstances that induced somebody to create it.
Third, it shows that not all the details of the parable can be understood on the spiritual level.
Fourth, notwithstanding this, except for the main idea, the parable can have the details that remind us about other truth or confirm it.
Our research is based on these classifications.
PART III. W. FAULKNER’S “A FABLE” AS AN EXAMPLE OF PARABLE THINKING
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