Speculative Fiction: Escapism at Its Best
Imagine a world without elucidation. It may be uninteresting just bland. That is what the world would be without speculative fiction. Speculative fiction is seeing things with the mind to make possibilities endless. Also, speculative fiction asks the question what-if? There are two main types of speculative fiction: Science fiction and Fantasy fiction. Science fiction extrapolates or pushes the mind into the future, predicting things like flying cars and robot takeovers. Fantasy fiction encompasses magical and mythical beings. Speculative fiction can connect with emotions and imagination. Often the above-mentioned genres teach life lessons yet force reader to become aware of the relevance of that
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For instance, in the short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” American author Ursula LeGinn, shows us the dark side of fantasy fiction. The story transpires in Omelas, a happy blissful society with a problem: its happiness is predicated on the misery of a child who lives in a cage under the city. Upon seeing the child, a handful of people leave Omelas and never come back(LeGinn,12). Hypnotically, this scenario can be compared to the enslavement of African people. Even though, enslaving humans and having them work hard labor Condoning the sale of human beings like cattle all the while being regarded as less than human. An entire race of people without rights and working to build a country that does not acknowledge them as human. Caucasian Americans saw this as normal and acceptable because it generated income. In addition, using the utilitarian approach was thought to be best for the economy at the time. The author is appealing to ones’ emotions to get them to sympathize through another perspective. At any rate, the short story is considered fantasy because there’s a magical element, being the towns immediate demise from the child’s happiness. Strangely enough dark realistic fantasy fiction is often needed to persuade one to become aware of the real …show more content…
Even so, in a poem by British author Neil Gaiman entitled “The Day the Saucers Came”. Is a epic tale of a day in which there's a massive alien invasion, incidentally there’s also zombie attack, followed by Ragnarok or the end of the world ironically everything enchanted: genies, fairies, leprechauns and giants roamed about, also a robot take over that turns the earth into a nuclear wasteland(Gaiman,5). Strangely enough, one cannot notice any of this because they were waiting for an unknown person to call. Ultimately escaping into a world limitlessness is far more enticing than waiting around for interaction. There is so much that speculative fiction can offer. In other words waiting for someone to engage with when is not stimulating to the
When an author romanticizes a piece of literature, he or she has the power to convey any message he or she wishes to send to the reader. Authors can make even the most horrible actions, such as Dustan murdering ten savages in their sleep and justify it; somehow, from both the type of mood/tone set in this piece of literature, along with the powerful word choice he used, Whittier had the ability to actually turn the tables on to the victim (i.e. the ten “savages” who were murdered in their sleep). “A Mother’s Revenge” by John Greenleaf Whittier, is a prime example of how authors can romanticize any situation into how they want to convey their message.
According to Laurence Perrine in his seventh edition of Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense he states the definition of interpretive literature is 'Literature written to deepen and broaden and sharpen our awareness of life.'; Interpretive literature is not candy coated. It allows its readers to experience the trials and tribulations of life. By using graphically realistic plots and endings, which are consistent to those in real life, interpretive literature achieves a higher literary value than escape literature. Interpretive literature allows its reader too step out of the fantasy world they might be living in and focus on what the world is really about. One might say an interpretive story provides insight to understanding. Not only understanding of ourselves, but our neighbors, friends, family or anyone else we might encounter.
I do not agree with Richler opinion when he says fiction is a waste of time. Reading a piece of information or any novel contribute to human being educational enrichment, never a waste of time. Fiction movies are entertaining, I enjoy science fiction movies because they are interesting and mostly because they are short and easy to follow.
Throughout your life starting from when you were a child you have experienced different point of views from watching and listening to people. Whether you realize it or not what you have experience has shaped you into the person you are today. The two short stories “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin and the essay “Hook Ups Starve the Soul” by Laura Vanderkam, are examples of how precedents can influence individuals decisions. These three texts reveal this concept by showing how individuals can be influenced by the actions that people are doing around them, by traditions that were set by past civilians, as well as following any previous examples set by family members. By showing the
When people read a story they form their own opinion. They form opinions on the characters, on what they think about the theme, and if they liked or disliked the book. An example would be when Guy Montag reads the Holy bible he can form his own opinion. Does he think the bible is horseshit and everything about it is terrible or does he think the messages are so pure he puts his faith into it, he could even be somewhere in between no one can know it is his opinion. The governments job was to figure out how to make everyone have the same opinion. They used technology of course. In The Life of the Mind and a Life of Meaning: Reflections on Fahrenheit 451 by Rodney A. Smolla, Smolla said that it first started with changing photography, then motion picture, radio and television. “Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of pastepudding norm, do you follow me? Bradbury 54” The government started using technology to make everything bland and all the same. The old books did not follow this way of thinking. To make it hard to form an opinion on classic stories and history they sped everything up and cut out important details of the story or what happened in history. “Everything became condensed, with classics cut to fifteen minutes, then to two. Bradbury 54” Beatty then continues to talk about the fast-paced electronic images in movies moving too fast to fully grasp and understand. The English Professor Faber mentions that technology moves so fast and loud it is hard to think of anything else, therefore it must be
As humans, we would like to think that whenever we find in a difficult situation where a choice is presented, we would always make the right one. The right one meaning the choice that either resolves or helps the situation. People are presented with these situations every day, and some choose the right choice and some do not. In Le Guin 's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," one of those situations presents itself.
Before they even pick up a pen, novelists are given a task of giving their book a point. Their audience are often searching for something specific when they pick up a novel: supernatural elements, a romance, or other elements. Having something “different” in a world of the same story being told over and over helps, but what makes a novel successful is how relatable a novel is to the masses. A theme is unable to be expressed unless the audience is able to associate themselves with the characters and situations that the author sets the story up with. One such author is Stephen King, whose real experiences and overwhelming amount of brand-tagging gives him credibility in his writing, making him one of the most popular modern writers of the past few decades. The novelist Stephen King demonstrates the theme of intolerance as seen in his book Carrie through the use of elements such as characters, setting, and diction.
African- American folklore is arguably the basis for most African- American literature. In a country where as late as the 1860's there were laws prohibiting the teaching of slaves, it was necessary for the oral tradition to carry the values the group considered significant. Transition by the word of mouth took the place of pamphlets, poems, and novels. Themes such as the quest for freedom, the nature of evil, and the powerful verses the powerless became the themes of African- American literature. In a book called Fiction and Folklore: the novels of Toni Morrision author Trudier Harris explains that "Early folk beliefs were so powerful a force in the lives of slaves that their masters sought to co-opt that power. Slave masters used such beliefs in an attempt to control the behavior of their slaves"(Harris 2).
In the process of compiling the literary works I intended to include in this project, I began to notice a common thread that connected the works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry that I generally choose to read. That common tie that binds these books together is that they all seem to center, in one form or another, around the theme of oppression. Perhaps this is because I have some deep psychological need to diffuse the power struggles I experience within myself by gleaning insight from the pages of someone else’s experience. Or, perhaps it is merely because I have a predisposition to “root for the underdog”. Regardless of the reason, be it simple or complex, almost everything I read seems to engage a “David and Goliath” scenario.
People read for many reasons, some of which are to pass the time, to seek out new experiences, for the sheer pleasure of the language and for the quest of knowledge. Literature is an art, and like art can be very subjective. What one person or society values as good literature may not be looked upon in the same light by another person or society. Some literature transcends time, and will continue to be relevant hundreds of years after it is written, and some literature will be relevant at the time it is written, however later may be largely forgotten. For literature to be considered great it must stand the test of time and be captivating, able to elicit an emotional and/or intellectual response. It should also enlighten and engage the
It makes you think of what could possibly come in the future. Speculative fiction can show you that we need a change, if people in the past could tell what could possibly happen in the future then maybe we need a change. Sometimes the future can hold something we may never be able to see, and sometimes we can see them, but we just don't understand them.
...oubled yet crucial faction of our society. To them, fantasy offers not only an escape from a complicated world, but also affiliates with adolescent desires and fears at a time when so few adults have the ability to reach them. For as Appleyard notes, such texts:
But I believe that anything that can be read has a meaning and we shouldn’t let ourselves think otherwise, even though they can be boring or the type of reading you don’t expect to read we should always read it no matter what. When you read something, you learn. It shows a sense of memory and the way you can think of these readings. It benefits us because our brain gathers all the reading and stores for any important occasion to be able to use it. Stories that are boring or not interesting to the reader can help to learn things that you never knew before. Sometimes we are stuck in one topic that it’s the only thing you want to read or see, we don’t give other topics a chance to help us learn. So reading boring stories benefits us in many
...hich those who have insight into the situation may affect change, one of the most powerful of which is through fiction. Skilled writers can convey the flaws in the system through their narrative without explicitly stating them, thus engaging the reader to think through the implications of the narrative on their own. This way, any conclusion arrived at feels like the reader’s own insight, making it more plausible than if the conclusion is thrust upon the reader by an overtly didactic text. In “The Tempest”, Shakespeare never explicitly states that enslavement is not logically justified, but instead subtly implies it through his narrative. I believe that it is in part because of writers such as Shakespeare who have—whether intentionally or not—used the medium of fiction to expose the problems in their society that our world is gradually moving towards social justice.
Literature can be entertaining, funny, beautiful and tragic. It takes us beyond our limited experience of Live to show us the lives of the other people at other times. We are intellectually and emotionally stirred by studying Literature.