Life as a Story

After watching the episode in class today, I was fascinated by Buffy saying, “Stop telling stories. Life isn’t a story.” This quote seems to both support and run contrary to what we’ve discussed about novels and real life in Northanger Abbey. In the beginning of the novel, Catherine Morland views her life as though it were a gothic romance, and expects to see ghosts and haunted mirrors behind every door. Thus, when she visits Northanger Abbey, she takes Henry’s teasing as fact and tries to bring to light the terrible murder she has imagined in her head. After her confrontation with Henry, Catherine experiences severe disillusionment when she realizes that real life is not, in fact, like a novel. This encounter would support Buffy’s claim that life can’t be summed up by stories. Furthermore, we see how Andrew avoids facing the truth of his crime by telling himself stories to cover up the fact that he murdered his friend. He uses stories as a way of glossing over the hard edges of reality, and these stories become a fictional world that he can hide in. Similarly, Andrew uses stories to romanticize Buffy and the apocalypse that she must prevent.

However, the very fact that Joss Whedon presents this quote to us through a character in a TV series would suggest that, in a way, life is a story. Each person’s perception of life is shaped by past experiences and emotions. Thus, no human perception can be without bias. Memories are stories that we tell ourselves over and over in order to relive past events. We learn about people and real life situations through how we experience them in our heads, on screen, or in novels. As we discussed in class, Jane Austen uses Northanger Abbey to teach us about life through the medium of a novel. She demonstrates, through the experiences of Catherine, that novels have a purpose for instruction and gaining knowledge about real life. Girls with overactive imaginations, like Catherine, learn about the costs of applying fantasy to real life situations through Catherine’s mistake. As Catherine learns how to behave in society, so do we as the readers. In this way, Austen herself seems to argue that life is a story, and telling stories is a real way to learn about life. Similarly, Joss Whedon presents Buffy as a story about a vampire slayer who deals with average real-life issues such as high school, friends, roommates, and feeling inadequate. Even while Andrew narrates his movie about Buffy, he seems to impart some knowledge to the reader. He says, “She's like a woman fighting for more than life. She fights like fighting is her life. It's like the air she breathes, and she knows she will win because there is no alternative.” It sounds kind of corny, but also contains some truth. Buffy has to believe in herself because if she doesn’t the world will, quite literally, end. I think the reason we still read novels or watch movies is because we do realize that in many ways life is a story, and through stories we can learn some essential truths about life.