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(2014
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm answers 2014 #1: Long Essay |
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Thomas Dion
Early American Literature: “Is this Fiction or
Non-fiction?”
“Excuse me! Professor! Should
we be reading this as fiction or non-fiction?” Every so often, I hear this
question asked in class and wonder to myself: is there a difference? What does
it truly mean to be fiction or non-fiction? Some say fiction uses lies to give
the truth scope, where non-fiction uses omitting polish to cover up blemishes.
Others say art embellishes, where facts and numbers tell a more realistic
encounter. If these two assumptions are true, they are a mirror’s image of one
another. Therefore the original question takes on new meaning. Is it being asked
in order to place the two on a hierarchy of which is more truthful? Which is
more false? Hate to disappoint, but it is all false. As Professor McNamara says,
“Take a look for yourself, just ink and paper, no people, nothing real.” But the
affect is real, if one chooses to believe it, which is as ambiguous an answer as
the question asked. The depth of it lies in the eclectic beauty one can proceed
with in reading where thesis and anti-thesis meet, exploding in synthetic
reality.
Literature is the analysis of
personal opinions. All texts have been written with an intended purpose and
whatever that purpose may be, it is the author’s opinion in the image of ink on
paper. Their opinions reveal themselves in the style and tone of characters
within stories, narrations, pamphlets, or letters read. Some of these characters
are based on historical figures and regarded with an aura, off limits to even
thoughtful criticism. These characters do not see the value of others’ opinions
outside of immediate use for personal gain.
Although there is a national holiday for
Christopher Columbus, (where one can get amazing happy hour specials all day
long), not much is discussed in public conversation about the man who is claimed
to have “discovered” the America’s. According to
Aids and
Accusations, by Paul Farmer, fifty years after
Columbus’ first arrival in Haiti, the population that was once “without number,”
occurring to Columbus’ own accounts from his letter’s, had been devastated to
only hundreds (32). Only ten years after his first voyage, Columbus’ own
observations , jotted down in a letter to the King Ferdinand, are perceived as
noticing this decline, from “innumerable” to only in the millions (32-35).
Columbus had one thing on his mind, turning this “fertile” land with
“limitless…trees of a thousand kinds” into a capital-producing state (32-34). A
reality he envisioned from reading Genesis in the Bible and incorporated into
his understanding of his newly synthesized
Espanola.
Whether the annihilation of the natives of Haiti was due to slavery, disease, or
outright genocide, Columbus’ letters do not reveal these modern criticisms; but
what they do say is how a man, who we now know, mistakenly landed on an island,
decided to claim it and all of the indigenous peoples for the glory of the
Spanish crown, without due process. And this is the explorer we are most proud
of in order to warrant his own day on our calendars? If this is non-fiction,
then it is pretty rough and biased if you ask me. But where did these stark
differences in interpretations come from? There appears to be multiple angles on
which to approach reading historical non-fiction.
Dissimilar to the mythical
Columbus, Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca is rarely talked about in literature or
history. Looking recently at both a high school and a college American history
textbook, I was intrigued to find no reference to De Vaca in the high school
textbook, and only a brief mention of him on a map of “Spanish conquistadores’”
explorations routes into the mainland of North America. First off,
Conquistador,
really? This label does not give him justice, and to put him under the same
categorization as Hernan Cortes is in many ways, disrespectful to De Vaca.
According to his account from
La Relacion, after
experiencing nine years wandering Texas, encountering all sorts of people, some
dangerous, some not, but most immensely hospitable; argued for better treatment
of the indigenous peoples upon his return to Spain.
La Relacion
is important to the investigation of all First Nations of North America, since
his observations give us an anthropological view of these “other” peoples
experience and life style, when compared to the New England area natives most
commonly studied in American History.
La Relacion’s
sentiment grows wider in opposing the stereotypical view that all explorers from
Europe were glory driven and leading to the demise of the First Nations. Instead
we see De Vaca navigate the spectrum of Amerindian life from hostility to
foreigners, to hospitality to a fellow person being caught in a cold storm, and
by the time De Vaca reaches the end of his sojourn to Mexico City, his
appearance and temperament has changed enough to be unrecognizable by fellow
Spaniards to the point of imprisonment (40-41). Around forty-two years passed
between Columbus’ first voyage and the end of De Vaca’s expedition and without
the first surely the second would not have happened. Then why do we rarely hear
about the second when his story gives a much more colorful and in depth picture
of life during these first contact meetings? Does Columbus gain his recognition
because his story is more factual, in other words non-fictional? Or is this
being decided for me?
This tough question was
answered for me when reading an article from the
New York Times
entitled “How Christian Were the Founders?”. Russell Shorto gives a blistering
account of how Don McLeroy and others
make history, “or rather, how the hue and cry of the present and near past gets
lodged into the long-term cultural memory or else is allowed to quietly fade
into an inaudible whisper.” The complaint here was
that
Thurgood Marshall,
Billy Graham,
William F. Buckley Jr.,
Hillary Rodham Clinton
were proposed and passed to be in the new curriculum. This was in 2010 and as
late as this past year, reported on by Tim Walker in
Don’t Know Much
about History,
Newt Gingrich was passed into the curriculum
but not Chief Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Knowing the difference between these two
and one does not have to try very hard to see - dare I say it - fictional
aspects are being used to construct in the holiest of non-fictions, a biased and
untruthful account. In this mass state of confusion of what is or is not
fiction, it would appear all hope is lost in finding the truth, and the answer
to our original question.
It is not so much a question of what is
fiction or not, but of how one chooses to read the given text that makes it
fiction or not. Captain John Smith and his,
A General History
of Virginia, brought me to this enlightened
state. Sharing the same character trait as modern historical text, John Smith
uses the help of an omniscient narrator in order to grant the work unbiased
credit. However, through intertextual studies and personal experiences we all
know that Indigenous peoples are not
savages,
and furthermore, his near brush with death was little more than a ritual
adoption ceremony, inducting him into Powhatan’s tribe. Reading through similar
narratives of the time, like Mary Jemison’s, can lead us to a better
understanding of Indigenous cultures. Yet, her story was written by James E.
Seaver, but in the first person narrative of Mary Jemison. Can we trust that he
is telling the truth through her? Do we have to take it on faith that he
captured exactly what she meant and felt in her narrative? Can we trust her
memory the way we trust John Smith’s? In retrospect, what about Columbus, he was
writing his letters in the moment, should we trust the present?
In review of the questions that were asked during this essay, few answers given and for a good reason. Professor McNamara said one more thing about literature that made this essay possible, “Good literature asks questions. Bad literature tries to tell you something.” Maybe we should stop asking if what we read is fiction or not. And start asking “what more can I read?” The answer to truth cannot come in the definition of a genre; it must be searched out through endless dialectic experiences.
