Why study fiction when it is not real?

Answer 1

What fiction are you reading that you would miss the very real point of fiction? Have you never read Les Miserables? For those who have, Jean Val Jean is very real and even more iconic. Have you never read A Catcher in the Rye? Holden Caufield is fiction but the conflicts and struggles he endeavored to overcome were very real, and because anyone, especially adolescent boys, who have had similar struggles will find Holden's circumstance very real. Have you never read Atlas Shrugged? Do you have no idea who is John Galt? Even Stephen King, while in his most ardent "I must make a buck as quickly as possible" mode, still manages to create characters who are identifiable and therefore real to the reader. It is not just the characters these writers create that are important. It is in the way a writer will turn a phrase that can grab you by the throat and demand you pay attention. Demand you think about what was just said.

William Shakespeare would take historical figures and then create fictional stories that revolve around them, not because of any legal ramifications, not to avoid law suits, but because the historical figure suited Shakespeare's premise and it is the premise of the story that matters. McBeth was a very real historical figure, Shakespeare story used McBeth to argue that unchecked ambition leads to tragic ends. Richard III was far more benign in historical accounts than the one Shakespeare wrote of because the Bard was less interested in historical facts and still just as interested in the fact that unchecked ambition is a dangerous road to take. When Shakespeare's Richard faces his tragic defeat all he had worked to achieve, all he had hoped to gain was reduced to this: "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

That is powerful stuff, and historians rarely achieve the philosophical nature found in Shakespeare, and rarely offer the lessons found in Shakespeare. Read away thou errant questioner! Read the words that strive to tell the tales of greed and avarice and lusty bargains as they are infinitely more illuminating than memorizing dates to epochs and eras.