Fictionally Speaking...

A couple of days ago in class, we discussed (briefly) what we thought the best vehicle for sympathetic imagination was: fiction or non-fiction? Is it more effective to give some one a list of numbers and facts, or are people moved more by fiction?


I think we are all familiar with the effects that facts have on us. Non-fiction stuns you and leaves you in shock. I remember hearing about the 2006 Indonesian Tsunami and how it instantly killed 200,000 people. Just hearing about it left me feeling sick. I was emotionally moved. Facts and numbers definitely have the ability to stir me. Can fiction produce this same result?

Kafka, in his "A Report for an Academy", writes a pretty strange and confusing narrative about his previous life as an ape. When I read it, at first I was confused and a little disturbed, but then Kafka's imagination started to work on me a little. At one point, the "ape" is in a cage, and he thinks, "In all of them, however, there was only one feeling: no way out" (659). After hearing this, I really began to put myself in the shoes of the ape, figuratively speaking.


Albert Ernest Flemming's translation of The Panther on page 665 had a very similar effect on me.
"His supple gait, the smoothness of strong strides
that gently turn in over smaller circles
perform a dance of strength, centered deep within
a will, stunned, but untamed, indomitable."
While this isn't necessarily comparable to Dante or Shakespeare, it is still beautifully written. After reading it, I feel more sympathetic and compassionate towards the panther. It is not just one of thousands of panthers, but rather it is a concrete, living, breathing creature in a cage.

Fiction combines fact and color, making it, in my opinion, more able to produce a lasting effect on it's audience.