Danger of a Single Story

There is danger in listening to single story. There is danger in trying to make the single story the only story. We are living in a 4D universe but still we just try to understand things in just 2D, not trying to know what is happening on the other side. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk titled The Danger of a Single Story explores the risks of minimizing people, cultures and countries to a single narrative. She discusses how some icons are being stereotyped when only one version of someone’s life or background, leading to misconceptions and incomplete understandings, is being highlighted. She asks the acceptance of multiple stories by understanding the multitudes of perspectives in and around a particular idea or fact. She uses her own experiences to highlight how she was both shaped by and challenged the single stories told about her society and her country.

When Adichie discussed a socio-political scenario, the danger lies in single story is happening in our everyday life. Blindly believing the misguided single opinion and shaping our visions only based on that will give us a different outlook, most often a falsified one. Never judge a person only on the basis of someone else’s perspectives or opinions. If we really want to know a person, just talk to that particular person, listen to what the person has to say, clarify your viewpoints, discuss the contradictory elements and make it one to one. “Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.” “So that is how to create a single story,” Adichie says. 

Understanding the real danger behind the single story is a life lesson. We sometimes build an image of a particular idea as the blind people in the old story went to see the elephant. The deal is in the details collected firsthand. It’s all about how we perceive things on our own and not being blindly biased by external viewpoints. Understand every dimension, bring out a clear picture of everything happening around. 

“Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error”- Marcus Tullius Cicero.

(Title courtesy: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

Nasila Jasmin
Assistant Professor of English
Al Shifa College of Arts and Science, Kizhattoor, Perinthalmanna

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