Power of Stories

The central theme of One Amazing Thing is the transformative power of story, through which the rest of the critical elements of the narrative are conveyed. The characters trapped in the basement turn to telling each other stories as their only means of comfort as they feel the inevitability of death closing in on them, relating to the audience the inextricable link between story and the human being’s quest for understanding and inner peace. As a graduate student of literature, the protagonist, Uma Sinh, is interested in hearing the other’s stories even before she believes that death is imminent. “Then her mind moved on to the untold stories that lay around her, just out of reach. Would she get a chance to discover some of them before they made it out of here” (40)? In this way, the author establishes Uma as the...