<p>This may seem like a trivial question, but I can't figure it out. Essay questions are always asking for examples from literature. How can a fictional book be used as evidence for an opinion? While fiction books may make enjoyable reading, they aren't real stories. Why would they have more validity than, say, a fairy tale about one's own life? I'm not advocating the latter, just wondering why fiction is deemed sufficient evidence for an opinion.</p>
<p>Many works of fiction are autobiographical or semi-autobiographical. So they are based on some truth. I am reading JM Coetzee's 'Disgrace' and 'Elizabeth Costello'. 'Disgrace' mirrors some of his experiences in South Africa if not in fact, in the tone and mood. 'Elizabeth Costello' are the musings of an author about his role in the world.</p>
<p>If you have read Charles Dickens and Maupassant, they reflect a segment of the society of those times....so they reflect truth.</p>
<p>Truly good fiction is really truth in another form. Although the characters and events may be made up, the stories illustrate truths of some sort. </p>
<p>Fictional examples could not, of course, be used in backing up some factual thesis. You couldn't use them to prove the effectiveness of a certain medical treatment, for example. However, if you are discussing some facet of human nature or how the world works, fiction can be used, because that is based on experience, not facts. And fiction is based on the author's experiences and what he/she believes about how the world works.</p>
<p>Does that make any sense?</p>
<p>I am not sure you are iuntended to use examples from Literature as "proof;" rather, you should use literary references to illustrate the point you are making.</p>
<p>yeah, exactly (what sb said)</p>
<p>By the way Ellen F. I thought that was a really good question.</p>
<p>Read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried</p>
<p>To probe a bit further... why would an author's fictionalized experience be any more valid than the real experience of a high school buddy, or that of your great-aunt's friend? Most people would consider my examples to be light-weight and not adequate to use as in an essay. Indeed, I myself would very likely not use them. However, couldn't these unembroidered experiences be more representative of human nature than those in a book? How does using someone else's beliefs and experiences (i.e. the author of the fictional book) make your argument more persuasive than using your own experiences?</p>
<p>Achat mentioned DeMaupassant and Dickens. I've read and enjoyed most of the works of both. Although when I was young I didn't question their stories, now I wonder, "Are the characters amalgamations of actual people? Is the storybook character's experience a combination of that of two, three, or four real people? (Most of our lives wouldn't make very interesting books!) How does that affect how the fictional person is made to react versus how real people react? Has anything been sanitized or made more extreme to illustrate an author's opinion? If so, how does that affect the validity of the author's point of view?" </p>
<p>I'm still unsure why fiction can be used in this manner, but do want to thank all of you for your helpful comments.</p>
<p>In SAT 2 they say use real life or literary examples. Lit just makes you seem well read in addition to a good writer/thinker.</p>
<p>"Why would an author's fictionalized experience be any more valid than the real experience of a high school buddy, or that of your great-aunt's friend? Most people would consider my examples to be light-weight and not adequate to use as in an essay. Indeed, I myself would very likely not use them. However, couldn't these unembroidered experiences be more representative of human nature than those in a book?"</p>
<p>No. Fiction elucidates truth most effectively precisely because it isn't real, because it isn't cluttered and clouded by facts. And, remember, even when you use a "real" story to illustrate a point, you omit some details and emphasize others in order to serve your purposes. In this sense, you're constructing a reality to illuminate a truth, exactly what good fiction does.</p>
<p>Human beings have always told stories to explain basic truths. Great fiction goes beyond entertaining to reveal things we might not have noticed or things we know in a way we've never thought of them before.</p>
<p>Then again, that goes in spades for great poetry.</p>
<p>As Susantm said, fiction can't be used to "prove" a factual point. In my work as a university volunteer tutor, I had a student write a paper for history on the Catholic Church that only fictional accounts from movies and novels to back up her thesis; she was incensed that she got an F on her paper. </p>
<p>My son had to tell his high school history class that "The Da Vinci Code" was entirely fictional, even the parts that claimed to be based on fact.</p>
<p>It might be nice if people were taught to distinguish fact and fiction. Having said that, I believe great literature does a fantastic job of illuminating key points about life.</p>
<p>nedad, have you read or seen the movie version of "On The Beach"? Fiction with a modicum of fact in it, but it rather proves the point. If not that, how about "Fahrenheit 451"? Even "Pride and Prejudice" does.</p>
<p>Facts aren't everything. :D</p>
<p>Hi, Strick11! I agree that facts aren't everything, and fictional books like Fahrenheit 451 make strong and necessary points. My objection to the DVC (and this is topic for the cafe, not here) is that it is not using small numbers of facts to prove points (some of which are good), but deliberate falsehoods (to take just one of dozens of examples - No, Constantine did not pick the only 4 out of 80 gospels that stressed the divinity of Christ; if anything, the other gospels, rather than showing Christ as more human, had even more bizarrely magical tales, and no, Constantine didn't even pick them! The other errors would take dozens of threads to discuss!).</p>
<p>I think the book most pained me intellectually: with advanced degrees in theology and hermeneutics from an Ivy, the book was a cautionary tale for "a little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep or taste not the Stygian spring." It was so bad that it made me weep.</p>
<p>You're right, I see the DVC as an attempt to create something like "Foucault's Pendulum", a mystery/suspense novel with a sensational religious twist.</p>
<p>Umberto Eco's much more talented, of course.</p>
<p>I will confess that the DVC was a real page-turner, though!!!!</p>
<p>I read too many mysteries, I guess. Normally I haven't a clue whodunnit, but for some reason I was always several pages ahead in the DVC. I could take it or leave it.</p>
<p>Okay, severely off-topic, but when the celebrated code-breaker couldn't recognize mirror-writing right away, I almost threw the book across the room.</p>
<p>It was a page-turner for the first half, then the more the horrendous "scholarship" took over, and the longer the night got (while the shorter the chapters got), the more exasperated I got!</p>
<p>I meant for the masses --- the book sold like the dickens!</p>
<p>Not a page-turner for me either - I repeat, I nearly wept when I read it because I thought it was so abysmal.</p>