ABSTRACT
Narratives are an essential tool for the construction of identity. In this process narrators demonstrate their relationship to shared values. Charles Taylor puts this succinctly: ‘To ask what a person is, in abstraction from his or her self-interpretations, is to ask a fundamentally misguided question’ (1989, p.34). In the process of this narrative construction, the self aligns itself with various dimensions of history and society. Narrative is thus ‘not an optional extra’ (ibid., p.47) it is the only way open to us for endowing our lives with meaning. Narrative displays the diverse ways of constructing identity.
