Monday, October 7, 2019

Siera's Conference Analysis

There was several different examples of story telling and narration in these sessions of General Conference. Elder Holland started off with his retelling of the parable of the blind man on the road to Jericho. What is always unique about Elder Holland's narratives is that he take's a common story and takes creative liberties to fill in additional details, usually focused on dialogue, in order to make it come to live. This was no different with this story, where he described the blind man's potential relationships before he ran into the Savior and how that effected the story we know. 
Another narrative that stood out to me was Elder Eyring's personal experience he shared. As he talked about his experience going to the temple for the first time, he spent a good portion of the narration explaining the the setting, the high ceilings and the shining white everything, before getting into his personal feelings and spiritual experience. He even included small details, like his parents knowing the man at the recommend desk and standing to chat with him for a bit. 
There were a few allusions to outside sources, but not many. There was once reference to a poem called "Sorrow Prepares You For Joy" by Rumi. Then, of course, there was Elder Uchtdorf's reference to the Hobbit. 

4 comments:

  1. Elder Eyring's personal experience stood out to me too! I loved it because of all the details. This is all reminding me of the different ways that we learned to write a journal entry. This style is the more literary. It made it like a journal writing experience because of its personal and detailed nature.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Elder Holland definitely has a knack for making the scriptures come to life. He, more than anyone, uses creative liberties to make them more applicable to his audience. I suppose that this may simultaneously suspend the reality of the text and yet ground the story in reality, similar to "The Welcoming Door"

    ReplyDelete
  3. Eyring's use of details was very powerful. It made me really connect to his story. Also, I LOVEd the use of the LOTR. It was cool how using something so popular was so connecting to people.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The emphasis on the setting was something that I didn't pick up on at first, but looking back it was a really nice point to focus on.

    ReplyDelete