Storytelling Theme Analysis

In The Passion, storytelling is a double-edged sword that simultaneously destroys the truth and creates reality. While narrator Henri is a young man in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, he begins to journal his experiences in an attempt to record the truth of what he feels so that memory won’t play tricks on him later. Yet when he mentions his journaling plans to his friend Domino, Napoleon’s groom (stable hand), Domino challenges Henri’s presuppositions about storytelling: who’s to say that the story young, ignorant Henri tells about what happens to him will be more accurate than the story an older, wiser Henri tells from memory? Other musings of Henri’s support Domino’s skepticism, as Henri feels that trying to express feelings in words often leads to a separation between the person talking about the feeling and the feeling itself.

In addition, throughout the book, both Henri and the novel’s second narrator Villanelle often ironically repeat the phrase, “I’m telling you a story. Trust me,” after saying something unbelievable on its face. This phrase implies that untrustworthy distortions of the truth and even total fabrications are part and parcel of storytelling. Yet at the same time, stories create reality by affecting what people believe and thus what they do. For example, stories of French national glory and military invincibility convince huge numbers of young Frenchmen to join Napoleon’s army, while stories of past Venetian culture lost after Napoleon’s conquest cause the people of Venice to resent and hate their French occupiers. Thus, the events of the novel suggest that storytelling is simultaneously untrustworthy and hugely powerful in its ability to influence reality.