Understanding of Life in the Oral Tale The Realization of Futility An Analysis the Narrative Cognitive Structure

This study examines the oral folktale The Realized Futility with a focus on the narrative cognition of human beings. It investigates how the protagonist comes to understand the meaning of the phrase “it is vain” through a specific cognitive process and how her experiences are organized and made meaningful within the narrative structure. Through this approach, the study explores how humans interpret and make sense of life. Human beings interact with the external world through language, and such interaction is embodied in the verbal art of oral folktales. This research highlights how narrative experience enables people to understand life, exchange emotions, and internalize knowledge. In The Realized Futility, the female protagonist begins a journey to understand the meaning of vanity and, through virtual space such as, encounters truths that are inaccessible in the real world. The story follows a “reality–virtuality–reality” structure and takes the form of a meta-narrative in which one story is embedded within another. This narrative flow mirrors the structure of human cognition: it begins with ignorance, passes through emotional and cognitive experiences, and arrives at embodied understanding. The tale exemplifies the narrative cognitive structure of “ignorance–experience–embodiment,” revealing the internal mechanisms through which narrative induces cognitive transformation and integration. In this sense, human cognition resembles a narrative form. To analyze oral folktales is to explore the cognitive features of human life. Folktales offer insights acquired in virtual spaces, and the value of oral literature lies in its ability to expand human understanding by integrating insights into the real world.