Discussion Topic

Fiction as history: Interpretation and examples

Summary:

Fiction often serves as a lens through which historical events and periods are interpreted, providing deeper insights into the human experience of those times. For example, novels like War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and Beloved by Toni Morrison offer rich, nuanced portrayals of historical events, blending factual history with imaginative storytelling to convey the emotional and social impacts of those events.

Expert Answers

An illustration of the letter 'A' in a speech bubbles

How can fiction be viewed as history? Provide examples.

When we want to get a look at what people were thinking about and how they acted one hundred years ago or two hundred years ago, fiction can give us the insight we need. All we need to do is read a book from the era we're interested in.

When we want to know how people sounded and what kinds of words people used, again, fiction can give us the insight we are looking for.

Just look at Tolstoy's work. There we have a prime example of a writer whose work offers a glimpse into a culture that no longer exists, from Anna Karenina to War and Peace.

We don't have to go back that far, of course, and we can look at writers like Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and even Toni Morrison to gain access to a view of life as it was, and gain a perspective...

Unlock
This Answer Now

Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.

Get 48 Hours Free Access

that gives us insight into the past.

That is history, isn't it - gaining access to the past?

Approved by eNotes Editorial
An illustration of the letter 'A' in a speech bubbles

It is certainly possible to learn something of history by reading fiction, but it is important to remember that the author of fiction is creating a fictional world that is serving as a context for the story being told.  By reading A Tale of Two Cities you can glean something of the essentials of the French Revolution, but it is not a completely true historical account of the time period. By reading To Kill a Mockingbird you can peer into a small town's racism, but the historical reality is much darker than Lee's fictional novel.

Approved by eNotes Editorial
An illustration of the letter 'A' in a speech bubbles

We can see fiction as history by understanding the feasibility of the events taking place in a particular story, and by exploring the possibility of those events to happen again at some given point in time and history.

I adore detective and forensic novels because they offer possible outcomes to realistic situations and they also educate the public in terms of legal jargon and things of that nature. That is why people enjoy that kind of stuff, because it is plausible and realistic.

Approved by eNotes Editorial
An illustration of the letter 'A' in a speech bubbles

Quite clearly, fiction is a product of the context in which it was written. Thus it is that so many novels can be seen as reflections or commentaries on aspects of their context. I am thinking of one novel in particular, which is Vernon God Little which one the Man Booker Prize a few years ago. What is interesting about this book is the way that it maks comments on the current popularity of reality shows and takes them to a logical yet satirical conclusion as the protagonist is due to be executed in front of a live audience having been voted as the criminal most people want to see die. We can see elements of this criticism of the media in other more recent works such as The Hunger Games. In years to come, we will be looking at these novels as one source of information about such phenomena.

Approved by eNotes Editorial
An illustration of the letter 'A' in a speech bubbles

Both history and literature involve selectivity, and because if this,  I agree with literaturenerd that the writing of history is fictional to some degree.  What details does the writer choose to select?  Even the selection process is a form of interpretation because each of us views the world  through a different lens.  If you look at the political books being written today, sometimes you would swear that liberal and conservative authors, writing about the same people and events, are writing about alternate realities.

Fiction does not pretend to present facts, but it acts as a window for us to view a glimpse of the past that is in some ways more honest because it does not purport to report facts.  One of my favorite novels, Ragtime, draws its strength from its use of historical figures as a backdrop to a story that shows us more about the times than any history of the era could ever do.

Another advantage to learning history through novels is that the reader is going to learn more about times and people of an era through engagement with the characters, who have thoughts and feelings the reader can identify with.  We all, I would guess, find the Russian Revolution far more fascinating in Dr. Zhivago than any of us would find it reading a history.  I would rather begin to teach about the civil rights movement by assigning The Secret Life of Bees than to use any textbook.  When I have taught social studies, I have frequently resorted to assigning literature, and my students have learned about history quite well, I would say.

Approved by eNotes Editorial
An illustration of the letter 'A' in a speech bubbles

I think that if one were to look at history, one could regard it as fiction. Consider this, history books from America and history books from Germany or Japan are very different. The writers and editors of these books take the information they find, interpret it, and write it down. So, yes...fiction most certainly pertains to history. Therefore, any book that depicts the story of the time period could be considered historical.

Approved by eNotes Editorial
An illustration of the letter 'A' in a speech bubbles

Fiction is part of history, because it tells us a lot about the time period in which it was written.  Realistic fiction provides a wealth of information about daily life, as well as people's attitudes and values.  All fiction tells us a bit about the society, because it's a product of the society.

Approved by eNotes Editorial
An illustration of the letter 'A' in a speech bubbles

We have to be careful about doing this, but if we are careful, fiction can show us what people believed during a given time.

For example, the book Uncle Tom's Cabin can tell us something about the time in which it was written.  We have to be careful, though.  We can't assume that its depictions of slavery are accurate because it was written by an anti-slavery Northerner.  We can't assume that all Northerners believed in Stowe's ideas either.  But because the book sold so well in the North, we can assume that many people there shared this particular view of slavery.  In this way, we can use fiction to shed light on what things were like during the period in which the fiction was written.

Approved by eNotes Editorial
An illustration of the letter 'A' in a speech bubbles

There are countless examples of fictional literary works that give the reader a history lesson through its content. Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, immediately comes to mind. Although Lee bases some of the scenes and characters from her own childhood, the novel is largely fictional, and its messages of racism and life during the Depression-era Deep South are wholly accurate and believable. There are many moral lessons to be learned in the story, but its historical content (especially dealing with white/black bias, gender bias, and treatment of the mentally challenged) teaches the reader as well. Many of Charles Dickens' novels also offer historically accurate views of British life in the 19th century, as do most of Shakespeare's non-historical plays. In so many cases, the story line and characters may be fictional, but the story that is told is totally relevant to the historical period.

Approved by eNotes Editorial
An illustration of the letter 'A' in a speech bubbles

How can fiction be viewed as history? Provide examples.

While fiction gives us stories about events that never happened, the setting for most fiction is a specific time and place.  When a writer sets his or her characters against that backdrop, the reader gains insight into that time and place and into how characters respond in that particular context.  We often can learn about  history by reading about how imagined people feel and behave.  We can often learn a great deal generally about a time and place as we see the "big picture" that emerges in a story. 

Two very different examples that come to mind are The Great Gatsby, by F.Scott Fitzgerald and The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini.  In the former, the Twenties in the United States are captured in the stories of the characters, with the excesses of the wealthy, the lives of the poor, and the ever-present American Dream that all the characters aspire to.  In the latter, we see a picture, past and present, of Afghanistan and how it has been ravaged time and again and of an immigrant community in the United States.  In both novels, we see the sweep of an era or eras and can understand the human responses to the setting in which the characters find themselves. 

It is my opinion that history courses benefit from the reading of fiction because we can identify so much more easily with fictional characters.  History really is a story that is woven together through a selection process with the purpose of allowing us to "see" something we could not otherwise available to us, and that is the purpose of fiction, as well.

Approved by eNotes Editorial