Historical Story

Catalyst (Script)

              This week we were assigned to write a script that dove into the story of someone in history that isn't necessarily famous. So, for example, instead of writing about Honest Abe for the billionth time and how he was such a jolly good fellow or hunted vampires or what have you, you would write about the woman who sorted and folded his socks. Granted, there may not have been a woman who pressed Lincoln's socks, but how are we to know? 

              We talked a lot in class about how history is subjective, and what we define as fact is what a bunch of scholars somewhere took a vote and decided, yes, that is what most accurately happened in the most factual format. However, every person has a different story. I'd love to hear about the little boy who started the snowball fight that began the Boston Massacre. I'd love to hear more about the blue-toed men that followed after Washington for months without pay in the hopes of forming an independent nation. We watched a video in class about the woman who pressed the shirts of the Norwegian King and had also taken down the Nazi's in their invasion. Who knows if this is true? Maybe it's completely made up by an old woman nearing dementia. But it may also be completely accurate.

               We also did a few readings in class on the same topic, and one that I felt was most illustrative of this idea was Vivian, Fort Barnwell by Ethan Canin. In it, the author relates about this specific memory he has about his mother because of this one picture he has of her, only to realize the picture wasn't even of the action he believed, or even of his mother. What he thought were sheets in the photo was actually tropical leaves and his mother was actually his grandmother. So did the memory exist, or was it fabricated upon seeing the picture and misinterpreting it? History is what people make of it.

               Following this theme, me and my partner decided to write the small story of a little family that moved right in the middle of the Hatfield/McCoy territory. Though no such family to my knowledge existed in that time and place, I've decided to make them the catalyst of the family blood feud.

               Historically, the Hatfield's and McCoy's had conflict prior to this pig incident. In 1865, one of the McCoy's ancestors had joined the Union Army instead of the Confederate during the Civil War, and was found killed by some of the Hatfield's after returning home from service with a broken leg. Devil Anse Hatfield, who was an affluent political member and the owner of a huge logging company that many of the McCoy's themselves were employed in, was accused of the murder but had an alibi of being sick in bed that let him off. The conflict was primarily dead from then on until 13 years had passed, and in 1878 a Hatfield and McCoy had a dispute over the ownership of the hog, and a key witness for that trial ended up murdered. 

                So using this basic historical plot line, we devised the small Abel family who had to move to a small cabin after the death of the father figure in the war lead to the loss of their original property. This cabin fell right between the feuding families, and when little Addie Abel accidentally lets out the pigs, he starts off the conflict. We chose to leave who's hog pen it was because we wanted to continue the idea that no one really knows who's pig it was. We also wanted to make a statement about the pointlessness of the blood feud and how far little misunderstandings can go, so we had the smallest, least daunting and innocent character be the cause of it all. 

                 In doing this, we hoped to hit on the theme of a subjective history and how it just might alter the way we feel about any given story. Here, we saw how a violent past could have been caused by it's antithesis: an innocent and curious boy. We hoped it would garner more thought toward history, and what the small contributing factors may change the way we feel about any given event. A woman in Norway could have changed the tide of the war in a little-known business of shirt ironing, and a small third party boy could have instigated one of America's most famous blood feuds. History is what you make of it.