‘Fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’ are the two genres that a writer goes for. There was a time when fictional books were written only for entertainment purposes but that is not the case anymore. The new trend is to provide morals to the readers apart from engaging them. The learning derived from the two genres are slowly but steadily converging to a single goal of reminding the readers of something intricate yet basic, sending across a message about the world they are currently inhabiting or dream of, for better or worse.
The fictional books provide a platform to the readers to identify themselves with the characters present in the book. The reader, in the process, suffers if the character he/she identifies with, encounters sufferings and is made to learn a lesson in the end. The non-fictional books intend to give out a message by describing the journey of a person’s life or some other real situation. It appears as if the fictional books serve as examples of the contexts explained in the non-fictional books.
While Harry Potter’s battle with Voldemort tells us that with grit, determination and by having faith in yourself, any evil can be fought and defeated, his endeavors throughout the series , leave a message of perseverance until you have achieved your goal no matter how messed up the circumstances are. The same morals can be derived from a non-fictional book containing an account of someone who has strived hard, against all odds, to achieve a position he currently enjoys, the autobiography of a renowned individual as an example. The suspense that a reader enjoys while reading an autobiography to know how the individual got out of messed up circumstances is the same as the suspense enjoyed when the reader grows restless to know what will happen next to a character in fictional books. A non-fictional book giving an account of the partition of India as seen through the eyes of an individual who has survived the partition, gives the same moral message of violence and wars being disastrous and futile, as a fictional book in which the same scenario is related. The examples can be innumerable.
Thus, the demarcation that separates the two genres, although being there, is blurring when it comes to the morals and the learning derived from a certain book. That being said, both are equally intriguing facets of writing.
Image Credits: www.talkandroid.com
Comments are closed.