What_Is_History_and_What_Is_Fiction_

How do Kate Grenville’s novel The Secret River and Simon Schama’s work Dead Certainties- the Parkman murder raise issues about the division between what it fiction and history' It is difficult to draw a definite line between what history is and what fiction is. Some may argue that all history is fiction, and that individual perspectives and experiences can alter the recording of a historical event; thus creating fiction, or altering the truth. Some may argue that there is a fine line between history and fiction, and that “recreating” a story in order to try to discover more about the past should not be allowed. These issues are explored through Kate Grenville’s novel The Secret River and Simon Schama’s work Dead Certainties- the Parkman murder. Creating a story in order to try and understand the past may be a conclusion that some historians may be willing to accept. When emotionally involved within a character’s story, some hidden emotions/feelings may be revealed, that otherwise would not have. However, is this really the definite voice of those who have lived in our past, or the writer’s imagination' Simon Schama’s work Dead Certainties- the Parkman murder is where some historians may claim that Schama has definitely crossed the line. In order to attempt to resolve the Parkman murder, Schama has written a novel, or in his case, an account, of what happened on November 23rd, 1849. When the present “facts” failed to reveal, perhaps, the most important pieces of information, for example, what was actually discussed between Dr. Webster and George Parker the day he went missing, Schama used from arduously collecting information about each man/character to picture what could have potentially happened, and in his case what really did. Perhaps this method is appropriate to help historians try to recapture the mindset of the people at the time, and create that sort of “ambience” once again, in order to discover some hidden emotions/meanings that have otherwise been missed, but others argue that it is impossible to place ourselves back in the mindset of the past, and a particular character/person. As Dr Inga Clendinnen, a Melbourne historian, states, “We cannot post ourselves, back in time. People really did think differently then...How much ‘culture’ do we really share with British people of 200 years ago' Are we seduced into an illusion of understanding through the accident of a shared language'” Ultimately, we can never truly know what has happened in the past, because all events have been written according to the perspective of the person. When trying to create fiction of history, these stories are arguably written based upon other stories, and cannot be absolute truth or fact. However, when using historic events to help create a novel, perhaps this can be accepted. A novel, in the end, is a story by which a writer has imagined either from roots in the real world, or in a fantastical world. The story of Governor Arthur Phillip’s encounter with an Aboriginal man inspired Kate Grenville to write her novel, “The Secret River” - a story regarding the colonisation of Australia and Aboriginal dispossession. One scene in the novel has some historians fuming over Grenville’s disregard for tampering with the events of the past. What was originally “three slight slaps” delivered by Governor Philip to an Aboriginal man because he had been caught stealing a spade, had evolved into on-going “slaps”, with the connotation that it was implied with force. Not only did she alter this segment of the event, but altered the time, place and the protagonist into an ex-convict settler named William Thornhill. Great success has come to the novel since its publication in 2005; however there have been many disputes that have arisen raising questions about whether the novel is crossing the line in terms of the history vs. fiction debate. Perhaps when dealing with novels, it is not necessarily the responsibility of the writer to produce a “factual” account, because that is not their intention. Artists cannot really be blamed for altering a historic event for the purpose of entertainment, because that is their job. However, perhaps the same extent of lenience should be extended to historians, as they can only piece together and speculate about the past from the same information that we have been given. In the end, history is only here to provide us some sort of an idea of what the past may be like. Some historians prefer to take different methods when trying to interpret the information we have been able to retrieve from the past, like the highly debatable method of creating a story/novel. Perhaps, the individual imaginations of humans may alter the reality that is presented to us through past written sources, but who is to say, that even these sources are reliable' Ultimately, whether sticking to hard “facts”, or creating a story to fill the gaps, nobody can really know what has happened in the past.