Writing and Reality

Before the difference between fact and fiction can be deciphered, it is first necessary to establish the definition of the term literature itself and more specifically English literature. "Literature refers to any composition in the English language including the ones that have been composed in English by writers who are not necessarily from England. For instance, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, and Edgar Allan Poe was American, and Vladimir Nabokov was Russian. Hence, English literature is as diverse as the dialects and varieties of the English that is spoken by people around the world and these writers all have their own styles when they create works of fiction or fact." (English literature). "The term fiction comes from the Latin word fingo or fictum meaning to form or create. Hence, fiction is something that has been created by the writer and is purely based on the writer’s imagination. It is sometimes possible for works of fiction to include real people, events, or places. The primary purpose of fiction is entertainment and the capability to create fiction, either in the form of books, film, theatre, radio, or television, is considered to be an age old aspect of human culture as well as one of the defining characteristics of humanity."(Fiction) Fact, or non-fiction, is the opposite of fiction and hence is a narrative that is based on reality and is not the product of the writer’s imagination. "Non-fiction writing is the one that is seen in newspaper stories, personal accounts, autobiographies, biographies, editorials, journal articles, legal documents, and textbooks. Writings in recent years have often witnessed a blurring of the line between fiction and non-fiction as novelists or the writers of fi...

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... world that is entirely separate from our own. We see how the same issue is viewed by another mind and how another person, the writers, feels about similar thing in life. An example of this is self-help books who teach people how to get out of their relationship crisis or how to live with a difficult boss. Though we may have tried and found that that situation is beyond help, it is by reading another person’s view and suggestion on the same topic that we may suddenly see the issue in a whole different light. The same thing is true for fiction where people find that reading even the imaginary and fictional works raise their spirits and give them hope about life. That is the main purpose of literature and that is why it is suggested that a person be well read and this gives them the vastness of ideas and thoughts with which to judge people and life in general.