Jos Andrs Aldana Santillana

English III

The Role of Reality in Constructing Fiction

When we talk about fiction, the first thing that comes to our mind is that everything

involved must not be related to reality. The problem appears when a work of fiction

contains chunks of real cases. Alice Munro, in her talk What Is Real?, tells us her opinion

as a writer about the role of reality inside fiction. She mentions that the foundations of

fictional writing come from reality, and the rest is the work and imagination of the writer. It

is important to be aware that even though both, fiction and reality may be found in the same

text that does not mean that the fictional part is associated to anything real. In this essay I

will examine the way that Munro uses reality to write fiction and why is it nearly

impossible to separate them in literature, because most of the knowledge a writer has comes

from his own perspective of reality. In addition I will explore the reason why some readers

might feel the need to connect the fiction inside a book with his reality.

Before describing a situation or writing a dialog, the writer already has an idea of

what the story is going to be about, the themes he is going to cover, who are going to be the

characters and which are going to be the locations. All of these, most of the time, come

from experiences that the writer has had or heard about. But we as readers must be aware

that even though some situations may seem familiar, it is only for the sake of the fictional

story. Regarding the use of real stories inside a work of fiction, Munro mentions:

I do it to show how bad things were under the old system when there

were prosperous butchers and young fellows hanging around livery

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 stables and nobody thought about building a new society. But the fact is,

the minute I say to show I am telling a lie. I don't do it to show anything.

I put this story at the heart of my story because I need it there and it

belongs there. (Munro)

Every reader wants to experience the emotions that their favorite characters are

feeling, and sometimes he would even like to be part of the situations that are happening

inside the story. Other reason on why the reader wants to connect his own reality to the

fiction inside the book, is because some how he wants to be acquainted with that fictitious

world, in order to comprehend more what the writer is trying to express. Wolfgang Iser

states: "Every textual model involves certain heuristic decisions; the model cannot be

equated with the literary text itself, but simply opens up a means of access to it" (Iser 7).

The fact that we can link some of the places, people or stories inside the work, with our life,

makes us more interested in what we are reading, because in some way, we become part of

the novel.

Munro says: "And I don't know where it [the story] comes from. it seems to be

already there, and some unlikely clue, such as a shop window or a bit of conversation,

makes me aware of it". We can agree then, that for Munro, the writer needs to use reality as

a tool to construct a fictional story. With her example of the elephant sculpture that could be

changed to a giraffe, we notice that is not actually a big change and maybe does not even

affect the story. But the fact that the writer has to change a simple animal sculpture in order

to satisfy the reader, takes away the freedom of the writer.

To conclude, although we may find parts that relate to reality inside a fictional story,

the reader must be aware that that does not mean that every other parts is related to an

especific city or place, neither the characters are representations of real people. These bits

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of reality that we find inside the stories are just there to help the writer in order to include

most of the elements of the story. Munro declares: "Every final draft, every published story,

is still only an attempt, an approach, to the story". And that is why we as readers must

respect the work of the writer as an attempt to capture the integral story. However it can be

understood that the reader tries to link the story to his own reality so as to feel related to the

characters or the plot.

Bibliography:

Munro, Alice. What is Real? Making it New: Contemporary Canadian Stories. Ed.

John Metcalf. Auckland: Methuen, 1982.

Iser, Wolfgang. The Reality of Fiction: A Functionalist Approach to Literature. Baltimore:

The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.