I thought we had a really interesting discussion in class about history, fiction, and how they're similar and different from each other. It's strange that we are so quick to believe any historical source as the truth, when in fact some stories are told from extremely skewed perspectives. Contrastingly, novels deemed as "fiction" are considered to be 100% false, when many books are actually based on real events or experiences. I think the line between history and fiction is much thinner than some people might realize.
As we've heard from Mr. Leff multiple times, it is always important to look through sources, even ones that seem credible, with a grain of salt. As the saying goes, "history is written by the victors." We often hear about certain events only though one perspective, that being the people in positions of privilege and power. When one certain group gets to mold history to their will, it's easy for records to end up falling short of the complete truth. One example that came to my mind when we were discussing this in class was of Holocaust deniers. One argument that I've heard repeatedly is that because of the Holocaust and the experiments that Nazis performed on Jewish prisoners, we were able to make many new discoveries that helped us greatly advance in our medicinal knowledge. While that isn't untrue, that's only one perspective. Looking at the larger picture and taking other perspectives into account, it becomes clear that the truth is a much different story. While history does have more evidence and credibility behind it than fiction, I think we definitely give some historical facts and sources more credibility than they might deserve.
As for fiction, most people read fictional novels assuming that everything in them is made up. While the events and characters themselves might be a figment of the authors imagination, the stories reflect real experiences and comment on real issues. Ragtime shows a great example of this. While Doctorow made up the many of the events in the novel, they reflected real experiences. For example, the storyline of Tateh raising his daughter is a common experience of many immigrants in America, and Tateh's success by the end of Ragtime shows the "American dream" that pulls many people towards this country. While the story of Coalhouse didn't actually happen, they reflected real attitudes and issues surrounding race at the time. Plenty of authors have used their works of fiction as a media to express statements and criticisms about the real world to their audience. Novels which we consider to be completely fictional actually have more truth to them than we may realize.
Clearly history and fiction have more overlap than they seem to. I myself wonder what the exact distinction is between the two. Someone in class the other day (I don't remember who) mentioned that if a narrative is told multiple times from different perspectives, it is taken more seriously. But then what about folktales such as Rapunzel, which also have many different versions? I think that the further we progress in the semester, the more blurred the lines will become between these two genres.
I agree. At the beginning of this semester, I was more on the side of thinking that there was a clear difference between history and fiction. However, through the books and articles we've been reading and discussing about, this distinction is becoming less and less clear. Besides the fact that fiction doesn't have as many boundaries as history may have, there are a lot of situations in which a piece of fiction can be more accurate in representing a time period than history is.
ReplyDeleteAs time goes on, the two become more and more similar. When you really thinks about it, it's basically impossible to show past events in a non-biased way. The only way that could happen is just writing out the facts to let the reader to interpret. However, what counts as a fact? People can also lay out facts in a way that reflects a certain viewpoint. In terms of fiction, I have found several times in history class things that I have learned in fiction. Fiction can be usually found to be based off of certain events or societies. While there are certain "made up" elements, fiction needs history at least for a launching point.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with what you are saying, and I think you do a great job of talking about such a confusing topic. Often I find myself getting a bit lost in all our discussions about what truly is reality and the "truth" in our society today. The closer these two genres get, the harder it seems to be able to distinguish one from the other; you begin to wonder what really "makes" reality real. Furthermore, the problem when I think about history and fiction is the human experience; we like to think of history as the facts, when they are coated with human bias. However, removing that bias is almost impossible because history largely is the experience of people. Likewise, we like to write of fiction as false since the perspective or story is not one we have associated with the "truth". This confuses me somewhat because, to some degree, isn't fiction just a retelling of "the facts", the same way primary resources recount the events? Though fiction is so vast I cant say this question works for everything, it truly makes you think about the way you view the world and "reality" as we live it.
ReplyDeleteWhat really frustrated me at the beginning of the class was that in my head, there was a clear distinction between history and fiction. One was real, and one was made up, of course they're two completely different things. But the more we discussed it in class, the less clear that distinction became, and that really frustrated me at first. However, like you point out, we're taught to be skeptical of some historical documents anyway, so the historical interpretation of fiction authors may not be any different.
ReplyDeleteI agree! What your post made me think about was the reading that we did on the first day of Junior history. We read two oral history projects that interviewed people in the US that had been slaves. Both projects were on the same women but conducted by two different interviewees. The results were extremely different and they gave a very different depiction of slavery.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I had no idea that people argued that Nazi doctors were highly medically productive in their experimentation on Jewish prisoners. That's frankly horrifying that people are trying to justify any aspect of the Holocaust. You mention how overemphasized portions of history often cause more trouble than fiction, but fiction in some cases can pose as legitimate history. Take, for example, the moon landing. There's always been a conspiracy that the moon landing was fake. Even though this is totally fictitious and there is no point of view that possesses any information or perspective that directly disproves the moon landing, it's still a relatively widespread belief.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I wonder if the distinction between history and fiction even matters in some arenas. If we tell ourselves some history happened it could be totally wrong but it informs our decisions and ideas. It's sort of a scary thought that all the history we learn and apply to our lives and politics could be so severely skewed in ways we don't know.
ReplyDeleteNice post! I agree with you that history and fiction are always blurred. I might even argue that fiction (especially fiction that was not written with the enlightenment of postmodernism and history) might even be MORE true to "history", as the authors had no motivation to conceal their bias and personal idea within their work. Authors, I'd say, are more subconsciously aware of their own human agenda than some historians are. (Now, your explicative argument about history and fiction becomes even more complicated when we factor historical "realistic" fiction -- i.e., Pride and Prejudice or, say, Henry V -- into the equation. What would E.L. Doctorow say about his writing becoming indicative of both the 1910s and the 1970s?)
ReplyDelete"While that isn't untrue, that's only one perspective." This is sadly yet another example of the Nazis managing to get their hands deeply, deeply into the historical record following the Second World War. We have narratives in our society which desperately want to believe, and want to convince the rest of us, that actually, fascism is more efficient, and that it may be brutal but it "makes the trains run on time".
ReplyDeleteNazi medical experiments, were, like pretty much all of their science, completely useless. Congratulations, if you cut two identical twins in half and sow them back together with half of the other twin, they die! Who could have possibly ever guessed! Even the hypothermia exposure experiments, maybe the closest to actually being useful, aren't, because they were performed entirely on concentration camp victims, not anyone vaguely describable as healthy, and therefore a decent experimental group. But even this simply ignores the part where deliberately attempting to induce hypothermia and death in human subjects is deeply, deeply unethical.
Being reminded that all history is narrative is a way for us to remember to look at every source we see, at every narrative we see in a history textbook. To see if it's someone trying yet again to convince us that Hard Men must make Hard Decisions, and that the Ends May Justify the Means. To see if it's yet another shout of "but the Nazis fixed the German economy!" (they didn't) or "Wehrmacht tactical advantage was only defeated by Asiatic Hordes!" (the Red Army never had more than a 1.2-3 to 1 force advantage after '41), or "if we just torture the terrorists they'll give us all the information we need to find Bin Laden" (they don't) or "throwing minor drug offenders in jail for life on the third offense makes us safer" (Finland has a 20% recidivism rate compared to 70% in the US and they get it by treating inmates with human dignity).
So looking back at this comment like an hour or two later I feel like this came off way too strong and I wanted to say that I was not trying to criticize the blog post which I thought was interesting and correct and doesn't buy into the narrative that I'm complaining about above.
DeleteI totally agree. I think the fact that history is taken as the truth is partly why it is often so biased. People writing about history will try extra hard to push their version of the story, so it becomes even more engrained in society. On the other hand, fiction is never taken as a statement of fact, so authors feel free to write whatever they want, even if it is almost completely factual. I think a great example of this is something that we talked about in class, where Hinckle Von Vampton publishes the US invasion of Haiti. Mr. Mitchell mentioned how he thought this was something that Reed had just created for the story, but when he looked it up, he found that it was an actual event. However, since the US was the victor, they refrained from putting the invasion in the history books, and thus almost nobody knows of its existence. So when Reed puts it into his book, everyone can just wonder at the odd event and nobody thinks to question it.
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