Fiction, The New Truth

Fiction, The New Truth

            Fiction is often viewed as false, fanatical or not accurate, but that is not the case. Mark Twain once said, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.” This statement holds true in realism short stories where authors explore the obligation of possibilities. Fiction, can describe the most believable events that have not, as far as the public knows, happened before. News, on the other hand, reports events that have actually happened, no matter how unbelievable they are. To summarize, many works of fiction are often as factual as the news we read and hear today.
            Fictional stories can often parallel factual news stories. The similarities are present in “Désirée’s Baby,” written by Kate Chopin, and a report on a mix up at a sperm bank. In the story by Kate Chopin, Désirée, the main character, and her husband have a child that appears to be part African American. Once the husband realizes this, he immediately thinks it is Désirée’s family with that blood and kicks Désirée out of the house. Little does he know, it was actually because of his family’s origin that the baby turns out the way it is. This story is almost a perfect parallel to a Huffington Post report on a mix up at a sperm bank for a lesbian couple. They report “An Ohio woman [is suing] a sperm bank after it mixed up donors and gave her sperm from an African-American man instead of the white one she and her partner selected” (http://goo.gl/K1q2mc)(huffingtonpost.com). This mix up resulted in the lesbian couple suing the sperm bank due to the consequences of this mistake. The parents claim that it has nothing to do with racism on their part but more to do with raising an African American in their hometown which is a 98% white farm town. The similarities between the two stories are shocking. In both stories, a couple has a baby that mysteriously results in black baby, and in both cases the couples were unhappy about how the baby will be perceived. This story proves that a mix up in a babies’ skin color is certainly not fiction and could happen to anyone, even if there seems to be virtually no chance of it happening. However, not only can fiction be as real as the news today, but also news can be as ridiculous as fiction.
           History.com reports in on this day in 1987, “The Goiania Institute of Radiotherapy moved to a new location and left behind an obsolete Cesium-137 teletherapy unit in their abandoned headquarters” (http://goo.gl/Yzj4IT)(History.com). Days later, two criminals stole the unit and sold it to a junkyard where it was dismantled, releasing the Cesium- 137. Fascinated by the glow of the radioactive material, they immediately cut it up and sent it to relatives as gifts. In the end, four people died from radiation poisoning. This story is as ridiculous if not more ridiculous than “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne in which the main character kills his wife by poisoning her in attempts to remove a birthmark via potion. Both stories have relatives that die due to accidental poisoning even though the husband and the criminal both had good intentions, proving fiction is not any more ridiculous than some of the news today.
          Living in his or her own fantasy world is often an expression that describes someone who is not grounded in reality, but that same fantasy world may not be that far from our own reality. Fictional stories can easily line up with many news stories today. “To Build A Fire” and “Désirée’s Baby,” and the reports about the avalanche and the mix up at the sperm bank have incredibly similar story lines. Moreover, the story about the cesium and the radiation poisoning is as implausible as The Birthmark’s plot. Fiction, in general, is not always fairy tales and magical stories. In the end, many fiction stories, especially in the Realism genre, are as factual and real as the news stories today.