History as Fiction - Jonathan O

    Octavia Butler's Kindred  hinges on one central premise: what if modern people from 1976 were to be dropped into the harsh, slavery-filled world of 1815 Maryland. It deals with some fundamental questions about human nature vs nurture, and about acting vs assimilation, and further complicates this by utilizing an unreliable narrator who is not simply an observer or bystander but a participant actively being changed by the story.      The difference between the effects of the 1815 environment on Dana, a black woman, and Kevin, a white man is immediately put in the reader's mind. Kevin, near the start of the book, is often directly compared to the various white antagonists, such as the patroller, through nothing other than racial appearance - the first sign of Dana's unreliability as a narrator (Butler 43-44). Kevin is also, more rightfully, portrayed as more ignorant - such as when Dana is talking to him about the horrors of the game the children are play...

    Both Chapter 52 and Chapter 52 are some of the most unique chapters in Mumbo Jumbo . Serving as an expositional backstory to the mysterious phenomenon of Jes Grew, Reed intersects mythology and historical fiction in a distinctive manner, and utilizes the ideas of historical fiction to shape the mythology of Jes Grew. Mythology and religion commonly have some basis in reality or history - think of Jesus, who was a real person, many kings who were worshipped after presumably going through deification, and others. Reed extends this ideology to Egyptian mythology and deities, and presumes that the central figures Osiris and Set were real people. In fact, Reed focuses more on Osiris and Set as characters in a historical narrative, and only alludes to the mythological significance of their actions and existence occasionally. At the start, we see that "Osiris was so adept at ... agriculture that people began to circulate stories that his mother was the sky Nut and the earth his f...

       As many others have discussed, Doctorow’s choice to leave characters named or unnamed is directly in relation to their status in “reality” or history. Doctorow builds his unnamed characters through the cracks of history, just like he crafts the webs of unlikely but unknown interactions between Nesbit and Goldman, Morgan and Ford. Although Doctorow frequently warps or builds on historical characters, their role in both “reality” and the plot is semi-absolutely true. The fundamental property of the named characters is that they are grounded into “real” history, and their actions are typically both restricted and enhanced by this knowledge. This is the juxtaposition of historical fiction – limited by what is real, but empowered by it simultaneously. Unnamed characters are similarly constrained by Doctorow to maintain the air of plausible deniability whilst constructing the connections that make up a character. Younger Brother didn’t “need” to meet Nesbit, to be c...