In response to my thesis—essentially stating that readers
must be able to “feel” the lies or/or question the relevance of the of the lies
to fully understand the truth that is being conveyed.
In an earlier blog post in regards to Cat’s Cradle, I state
“I think Cat’s Cradle is a clever way of blurring the line between true and
false because in the end, isn’t “our world” a lot closer to the world in Cat’s
Cradle where seemingly “nothing in [it] is true.” It is once we question the
relevance to our own lives and validity of these lies and fomas that the reader understands Vonnegut’s goal in his satire,
and comes to the jarring conclusion that the fictional world in Cat’s Cradle is
eerily similar to our own.
Similarly, O’Brien manipulates the reader to really feel the
lies that are being told, though we are consciously aware of the fictional nature.
By the reader having a visceral and “real” reaction, we are no longer tied down
by figuring out if something is true or not, because we have already felt the
meaning that O’Brien is elucidating.
It is the manipulated “real” reaction that the authors extract
from their “fake” works that create meaning for a reader, and arguably a more authentic meaning than a non-fictional counterpart.
I like your idea of provoking a more “authentic” meaning using lies. In some ways, I think this is absolutely true. You can support this through reference to this quote: “A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe” (O'Brien, 74). To reach the authentic truth, sometimes it takes more than a convincing argument—it takes some fabrication to get people to really feel what it was like. And for certain stories, the feelings are what make it really “true.” However, this also reminds me of a conversation we had in class about authorship and how we read stories differently if we know they actually happened. For example, readers are sometimes more heavily impacted by a tragedy if they know it is "true."
ReplyDeleteI really like what you said about Vonnegut and O'Brien using their stories to parallel the real world. I think that both works create multiple layers through which they can talk about some of the tougher-to-talk-about issues (like the dependence on religion) by operating under the guise of the label "fiction." It seems to me that "fiction" then provides a safe distance that allows you to discuss and think about the things that actually occur in our society without the discomfort that often accompanies analyzing or critiquing the real world.
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