Telling America’s Story: Narrative Form and the Reagan Presidency

Introduction

In general, narrative paradigm uses two-steps critical process; organizing the narrative into coherent themes and next, using standards of narrative rationality so as to assess those themes. The story, “Telling America’s Story: Narrative Form and The Reagan Presidency”, uses the narrative paradigm to explain why a particular audience in a given narrative seems to be persuasive. Apparently, critics of narrative paradigm did not come up with a complete roadmap of how to identify themes and strategies in a given narrative. As a result, this has led to a number of rhetorical critics to develop an inductive approach of analyzing narratives. Lewis essay is an example of the inductive approach. Under the inductive approach, it does not involve using preexisting theory of narrative, but rather, an implicit narrative pattern is used in a given story. In the essay, for example, Lewis argues that a lot of Reagan’s rhetorical and political persuasiveness can be attributed to his success as a storyteller. Furthermore, Lewis identifies two types of stories that are within Reagan’s rhetoric: anecdotes and myths. Anecdotes are small stories that are used by the main character to keep the reader interested in the story. They are quick stories, jokes or incidence that are intended to create a larger frame of understanding that is assumed by the audience. In the Reagan’s story, there is an anecdote about his Supreme Court decision where he prevented the school children from praying while they were at cafeteria. The purpose of this anecdote was to establish the relationship to the school prayer and, in a larger context, the religious belief that was important to the moral order of the people. The anecdote intended to show that people ought to pray in private without the restriction of the government. In Reagan’s case, the anecdote was meant to speak to the audience about his character; that he was expected to be uniformly republican or conservative (Lewis 285). On the other hand, myth is an anonymous story telling about origins and destinies. Reagan story of success relies on the myth of the origin of the Americans; and not about the destiny of humanity, but the destiny of the American people. Myth has been used in Reagan’s essay to show the power that lives between the America’s fantasy and the reality. Besides the above mentioned rhetorical devices, the paper will show how Lewis uses the inductive approach to illuminate Reagan’s brilliant rhetorical stories that led to most Americans viewing Reagan’s narratives to be compelling.

Analysis of Reagan’s story

Whether or not people accepted the policies of President Ronald Reagan, there was the general consensus that he was the most gifted communicator in the West. Despite Reagan made mistakes and sometimes his actions appeared to be inconsistent with his words, most of his supporters were loyal to him. The pedestal pillow of his successful reinvigoration of United State’s nation was the predominant narrative form of Reagan’s speeches. Reagan was adept at short stories, jokes and incidences that expressed simple precepts. Because the stories appeared true to life, people accepted them as morals. His remarkable popularity in 1980 was used to identify Americans largely and more about their destiny; that they were a chosen nation, rooted to their families and neighborhoods. Reagan presented himself as one of the great heroes who had anchored and inevitably driven forward America to a world of freedom and economic progress. Lewis believes that Reagan used stories to shape his message. For example the Reagan’s narrative form was very effective because it encourage encouraged identification such as his myths and anecdotes (Lewis 285-302).

According to Lewis analysis, despite Reagan’s story falls into the confines of the inductive approach, he has illustrated that the approach has some limitations. Kuypers (126) explains that Reagan’s rhetoric (myths and anecdotes) provides little guidance on how to approach the narrative analysis. He further explains that the analysis of the narrative theory should follow a systematic perspective, that is, a three-step process that should involve the form of the narrative, the function and the evaluation. Kuypers explains that the purpose of the systemic perspective is to make the narrative to function persuasively with any given audience. The above essay does not take the three-step process and as a result, it does not sufficiently support the thesis.

There are other major elements that define all stories such as characters, settings, plot and themes. Reagan’s rhetoric has a number of flaws that makes it to be inconsistent to the inductive approach. In relation to characters, it is vital not only to identify who the characters are, but also what they represent in the narrative. Moreover, a good story should have the protagonist, supporting player and the antagonists in order to develop their roles in the story. Regan’s anecdotes and myths, however, show Reagan as the protagonist but lacks antagonists. As a result, Reagan’s rhetoric does not effectively develop his character as the American hero. According to Kuypers (127), discovering the main conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist is essential when developing the plot structure and the theme of a story. Similarly, identifying the roles of the supporting characters can help the audience to identify the underlying message of the narrative; however, Reagan’s rhetoric lacks supporting characters and as such, is it not clear what message the Reagan story intended to convey. The narrative only expresses Reagan’s might and prowess but it does not identify antagonists and roles that were played by supporting players during his regime.

Another important element of a rhetorical analysis is the plot of the story. Often, the plot of a narrative moves in a variation of a rising action in which the more problems occur, leading to a final crisis in which the problem is resolved. Kuypers (127) states that a good narrative should be the one that the audience can identify the main events and order in which they happened that led to the revelation of the message of the story. In Reagan’s rhetoric there is insufficient provision of the event and lack of order in of the event that led to his victory and might. The narrative narrowly explains America’s history of success but it does not reveal the major events in Reagan’s life that led to his increased popularity.

Conclusion

The three-step process and the major elements of the narrative analysis are useful because they help by providing comprehensive standards for evaluating the accuracy of a narrative. The analysis provides us with the knowledge of making judgments about the believability or the credibility of a narrative. However, Reagan’s essay can be improved by explaining his popularity from different stories such what other people thought and spoke about him, how his antagonist said about him. However, the weakness of this story is its exclusive and implicit reliance on a single story.

Works cited

Kuypers, Jim A. Rhetorical Criticism: Perspectives in Action. Forbes Boulevard: Lexington

Books, 2009. Print.

Lewis, William F. “Telling America’s Story: Narrative From and the Reagan Presidency.”

Quarterly Journal of Speech, 73, (1987): 280-302.