Fiction works are approached by readers in different ways: whereas certain audiences believe learning the facts about themselves and the world around them is an integral aspect of reading fiction, others view literary works merely in terms of distraction and entertainment. In fact, one of the main purposes of fiction is embedding real-life truths into a series of imagined facts. The present paper argues that fiction works contain “truths”, reflect the objective reality and support people in understanding complex human behavior and society; moreover, through crafting interesting plots, fiction writers highlight specific psychological and social issues and present in a grotesque way.
For instance, one of the works of the 19th-century literature, “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” by Stephen Crane, focuses on the relationship between marital responsibility and maturation of boy-men and shows the triumph of family values over those of the community and person. Jack, the main character, who works as a marshal from Old West town called Yellow Skies, creates a family, despite the commonly shared belief that the inhabitants of the “wild” frontier territories are not expected to get married. As an inexperienced husband, Jack behaves like an adolescent in attempt to impress his beau with luxury; for instance, he buys her a beautiful dress with puff sleeves she never wore before and arranges a trip in the first-class compartment decorated with “sea-green figured velvet, the shining brass, silver, and glass” (Crane, p.2).
As Jack realizes family life does not belong to the category of his “boyish” games, he feels guilty for betraying his community. However, when the main character faces even more infantile creature, drunk man named Scratchy planning his regular practical jokes, Jack decides to meet him unarmed. In his encounter with Scratchy, who is referred to as innocent drummer ( Crane, p.7) and behaves like a capricious and aggressive teenager during his puberty, Jack comes to the idea that he is not willing to resemble this local “Peter Pan”. In order to assert his new social identity, Jack explains to Scratchy that he has no arms, as he is now a family man. In fact, such psychological transformation often happens in newly-married men who face the situations in which it is necessary to choose between the realization of personal and family interests. In fact, responsibility in the context of marital life is learned in the life events that are similar to Jack’s case with Scratchy.
“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, a Modernist fiction work, closely touches on the problem people were concerned about in all epochs and generations, which is the relationship between love and belonging. The main character, Miss Emily, falls in love with a careless womanizer who decides to abandon her after a short affair. In order to retain her lover, Emily poisons him, puts his corpse in her bed and spends night with the dead body in the following forty years. Although the author does not explicitly describe the details of her family life with the corpse, it is clear that the woman is ultimately content with the fact of her physical “ownership” of Homer. By depicting selfish and “possessing” love through such a thrilling plot, the author obviously implies that love cannot be imposed and the other half should not be viewed as property. Such model of building romantic relationships is relevant nowadays as a deterrent for excessively authoritarian and domineering lovers.
The Post-modernist short story by T. Coraghessan Boyle entitled “Greasy Lake” depicts the reverse side of the society, whose life is regulated by laws, namely outrage and deviance. One of the major themes of the literary work is human behavior in the dimension where no rules are active and whose functioning is based upon the basic natural law proclaiming the survival of the fittest. The group of adolescents, the major characters of the short story, overtly reject authority, as they are still too young to comprehend the importance of following the basic rules of peaceful coexistence among human beings, yet strong enough to wound a man and rape his girlfriend. Given their limited ability to understand the consequences of their actions, the boys cruelly batter a strange man named Bobby; moreover, after noticing his girlfriend in his car, they commit violence against her out of pure interest. However, at the end of the short story, they face the direct result of moral nihilism, finding their coeval dead and floating in the dirty lake. Thus, the dimension where humans define their behavior on the basis of their inner driver and principles is destructive as long as these individual norms do not comply with those embedded in the societal consciousness.
The contemporary work entitled “The School” and created by Donald Barthelme is instrumental in understanding the problem of modern individualists. Through showing the class as a “dead” zone where every living being inescapably perishes, the author implies that a number of contemporary people are not capable of true devotion and thus lose their sense of existence, as human being is essentially a social creature and fully actualizes themselves through contributing to the others’ lives. At the end of the narrative, the schoolchildren discuss the ideas of life and death with their teacher, they refer to individual physical pleasures such as making love, replacing feelings with sensations. Thus, if viewed from a broader perspective, this group of extraordinarily mature and smart children represents our modern individualistic society, whose members, having dedicated a significant part of their life to creating their comfortable personal world, once “wake up” find themselves incapable of building constructive, warm and deep relationships with others and the community.
Thus, the analysis of the four short stories from the different epochs suggests that fiction reflects a variety of interpersonal and social issues, which appear to be relevant in the present day, in particular, socialization and maturation through marriage, belonging and freedom in romantic relationships, the importance of order and social organization and the destructive effect of individualism on human perception of the meaning of their existence.
Works cited
Crane, Stephen. “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky”.
Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily”.
Coraghessan Boyle, Tom. “Greasy Lake”.
Barthleme, Donald. “The School”.