The Fictive Experience: Understanding Fiction as Art and Social understand the logic of his/her actions.
of his/her actions. Because fiction involves
Commentary
A. Fiction as Art
The study of fiction, just like any other form of literature,
demands that we look at it from both the aesthetic and cultural points.
Fiction is not merely an art and a thing of beauty; not solely a crafty
design wrought by an intelligence. It is, too, a social document, a
complex text replete with more complex subtexts and contexts.
Writers write in specific milieus, in particular place, time and view
point. To consider a story, therefore, as a mere form that satisfies
artistic theories is to miss entirely a gamut of socially significant issues
inscribed. After all, our effort at determining meanings finds its bearing
not in the text itself but in the subtext, the social elements present in
the text, and the context, the relationship between text and subtext.
In the end, we expect to live literature instead of simply read
it. Meaning—it should be, as it probably already is, in the fabric of our
social consciousness. We do not see any reason why we should
spend time attending to it if in the end it does nothing but gratify the
intellect.
Fiction, noted X. J. Kennedy, is derived from the Latin fictio
which means a shaping, a counterfeiting. In it, we expect a sense of
how people act instead of an authentic chronicle of how they acted.
We see more deeply into the minds and hearts of the characters than
we ever see into those of our family, our close friends, our lovers—or
even ourselves (Literature 3 – 4).
To probe, it shall suit us to consider the fundamental fictional
elements that will help us grasp its rules.
Characters
A better way to study characters is perhaps to pin down their
psychological traits saved for stories that do not lend to our noting the
characters’ behavior due maybe to an emphasis on plot or setting or
other elements. We want to approximate the kind of character we deal
with. We want to know his/her frame of mind and motives and
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design, writers are meticulous in characterization. They see to it that
what their characters do in a given story falls within acceptable logical
framework. To do this, we delineate or sketch. Observe the characters’
physical traits or descriptions, their utterances, gestures, thoughts. If
they come alive in our imagination, then the writers succeeded in
fashioning them. NVM Gonzalez once said to the effect that when he
is done with his characters he wishes them good luck and make
friends with other people. This underscores one thing: that the more
real the characters are in our minds, the more we see ourselves in
them and learn from them thereby. Alfredo Salazar for instance in Paz
Marquez Benitez’s Dead Stars, is someone we almost clearly see as
real:
Tall and slender, he moved with an indolent ease that verged
on grace. Under straight recalcitrant hair, a thin face with a
satisfying breadth of forehead, slow dreamer’s eyes and
astonishing freshness of lips—indeed Alfredo Salazar’s
appearance betokened little of his exuberant masculinity;
rather a poet with wayward humor, a fastidious artist with a
keen clear brain.
Benitez’s consistency of characterization in terms of description and
action creates an illusion of the real and prods us to react accordingly.
Setting
Setting on the other hand, is that which locates the readers to
a specific time and place. The when and where of a story often
provides a visual sense and allow us to participate in the sights and
sounds of a story. Moreover, it can lend, as noted by Joseph Galdon,
atmosphere and thus contribute to its emotional effect (Insight 155).
Or, it may be utterly relevant to the meaning of the story. Consider that
setting as an element is a part of a weave, of a much larger whole that
is a composition. In short, it may further the story’s idea or theme or
may stand in contrast with it as in Hemingway’s Café in A Clean, Well-
lighted Place. Often, it gives a sense of a story’s thought or even the
behaviors of characters who, by and large, are dictated by the place
they inhabit. When the boy in Araby is conflicted with an obsession
and is muted to say his desire for a girl, it is partly because that girl
who wears a silver bracelet is beyond him who lives in squalor and
place with other boys through the dark muddy lanes behind the
houses…to the backdoors of the dark dripping gardens where odors
arose from the ash pits.
The external as we say is our clue to the internal. Thus, the
description of the outside world/environment hints at the
consciousness/psychology of the characters. It tells us of the extent of
their feelings as in Manuel Arguilla’s Midsummer. Here, the emotional
state of a man who is in the height of his sexual passion and is seeking
for a woman to love is suggested by such passages as:
In places, the rocky, waterless bed showed aridly. Farther,
beyond the shimmer of quivering heat waves rose ancient hills
not less blue than the cloud-pallisaded sky.
or
The bull slowed down, threw up his head, and a glistening
thread of saliva spun out into the dry air.
Plot
Exposition is the usual beginning of a plot, the sequence of
events in a story. It introduces the characters, tells us what happened
before the story opened, and provides any other background
information that we used in order to understand and care about the
events to follow ( Kennedy 8 ). Complication then follows. A series of
conflicts that will pit the characters against the opposing forces that
bars him/her from accomplishing a goal/desire. It necessitates
suspense which X. J. Kennedy describes as the pleasurable anxiety
we feel that heightens our attention to the story (Literature 9). In
addition, Laurence Perrine noted that in more sophisticated forms of
fictions, the suspense often involves not so much the question what to
the question why—not “which will happen next?” but “How is the
protagonist’s behavior to be explained in terms of human personality
and character? (Literature 43). Conflicts must be immediate, pressing,
and believable. The more credible the conflicts, the more compelling
the stories. Conflicts can both be external and internal. But given
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human nature and the fact that we are psychological beings, we are
led to believe that when man/woman struggles against himself/herself,
a story may more likely constitute a better conflict than that which
purely deals with the external. A series of internal/external oppositions
in the characters’ foray leads to a climax, a moment of utmost tension
that decides the outcome or conclusion/resolution (Kennedy 9). The
moment the conflict is resolved and other subsidiary oppositions
sorted out, the story is brought to an end and the plot completed. A
good plot, however, doesn’t end in the sheer arrangement of details.
Artistic unity, noted Perrine, is essential to a plot. There must be
nothing in the story that is irrelevant, that does not contribute to the
total meaning… (Literature 47). This prods us to account for the littlest
detail or description in the unfolding of events. Everything the writer
includes in his/her plot has something to do with a story’s meaning. In
the end, we learn of an epiphany: some moment of insight, discovery,
or revelation by which a character’s life, or view of life, is greatly
altered (Kennedy 11). In Araby, the boy is initiated into maturity by the
realization of his futile obsession to the girl.
Point of View
In fiction, it simply means the narrator (not the real-life author).
The author selects a narrator, a specific angle of vision with which to
tell a story. Describing any part a narrator plays in the events and any
limits placed upon his/her knowledge, is to identify the story’s point of
view. It may be illustrated as follows:
Narrator – participant (first person: I, We)
1. a major character
2. a minor character
Narrator – a non-participant (third person: He/She/They)
3. all-knowing (seeing into any of the characters)
4. seeing into one major character
5. seeing into one minor character
6. objective (not seeing into any characters)
( Kennedy 18-19 )

It pays to know the narrator in full. After all, it is from him/her that we
know a story. What the narrator says and reveals and what he/she
withholds is crucial to the meaning of the text and to the understanding
of the characters’ motives. As in real life, we want to test the credibility
of the teller and the accuracy of his/her tale if we are to believe in the
narrative. In addition, if it is from the narrator that we discover an
insight in a way new and fresh. When fictionist Edilberto Tiempo
compared point of view to a Sabbatical leave, the freshness of insight
it offers is exactly what he meant—every point of view, he said, should
be in a sense a print of departure from actual life (Literary 117).
Aesthetic distance, he continued, must be observed to achieve
objectivity (118). Hence, the writer by carefully choosing a narrator
detaches himself/herself from an unfolding event that is the story. This
disguise, therefore, in the persona of the narrator puts the writer in a
certain distance away from his/her usual, everyday self. Tiempo
further explains the advantages and disadvantages of this angle of
vision itemized earlier. The first person, he noted, gives what Henry
James coined an illusion of reality. Being a participant of an event, the
teller sounds authentic. The disadvantage, however, is the fact that
the narrator is limited to the action he/she participates in. But, if the
character is a witness, the scope can be wider as the narrator can tell
not only what he/she has seen but also whatever other incidents he
can gather relevant to the story. In the scenic or third person objective,
Tiempo avered that a story is seen only through the action, words, and
sentences of the characters. Whereas the third person omniscient
allows the author to go into the minds of the characters (127).
Point of view, he continued, serves for two things: a unity
element and an instrument for variety and complexity (127).
Theme
There is no way a theme should be mistaken for a moral of a
story. Writers do not concern themselves with morals. Instead, they
bring to light an idea/thought/feeling or truth so that it is once again
pinned down to its core, stripped to its soul. Artists always see things
in another light. At times, surprisingly very far and removed from the
way normal people see objects. But that is just the point. By inviting
the readers to see from where the writers are working, we discover
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something which otherwise we may have simply put aside. The study
of theme involves a basic question: What is the writer saying about
his/her subject? What a writer explores is his/her subject. What is it
exactly that he/she states about this subject? Any good story makes
this very clear in the end so that readers are not left in a quandary and
not getting into the heart of the matter after a close inspection. James
Joyce in Araby was sharp in goading us to the story’s epiphany where
we see the boy’s initiation to maturity by a painful discovery of his blind
obsession. So what statement is Joyce making? If it is not obvious to
the reader, he/she is entitled to make a general statement out of it. But
clearly, a skillful artist is able to drive home his/her point if a story in
itself is sufficient. Meaning—that meaning is inherently there
(deconstruction, not withstanding, which often displaces meaning in
the hands of the readers).
The theme of a piece of fiction, adds Perrine, is its controlling
idea or its central insight. It is the unifying generalization about life
stated or implied by the story. To derive the theme of a story, we must
ask what its central purpose is: what view of life it supports or what
insight into life it reveals. More often, he continued, the theme is
implied. Story writers, after all, are story writers, not essayists or
philosophers. Their first business is to reveal life, not to comment on
it.
The illumination of a thought/idea or a truth, is what readers
should concern themselves with instead of a story’s moral. Morals,
Perrine adds, are rules of conduct that students or readers always look
for and regard as applicable to their lives. There may be times when
a theme is expressed as a moral principle without ruining the story.
But often, it does not encompass a story’s theme or is too narrow to fit
the kind of illuminating provided by a first-rate story (90-92).
It may help to formulate a statement. Something like: greed
often leads people to self-destruct as in Tolstoy’s How much Land
does a Man Need? Perrine admonishes readers to be careful about
the terms they use. Words such as some, sometimes, may, seldom,
etc. re often more accurate than the too—generalized ones like all,
always, every, never, etc. (95).Readers can very well state the theme
however they want as long as they take into careful account the details
of the story. After one is done with the story the central and unifying
concept must be clear. When all details are considered, and one looks
at a piece in its entire whole without missing any singular detail then
the formulation of a theme can follow. The above Tolstoy example can
be rewritten a:
A. The desire to have more and acquire what people think they
need destroys not only the spirit but the flesh as well
B. Destruction maybe brought about by an unending greed of
something
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Note that the three statements thought in varying forms is identical in
sense they do not in any way contradict. Careful scrutiny brings
readers to the heart of the matter rather than away from it. In a way,
formulating a theme necessitates the segregation of the peripheral
and the central details or issues and guides the readers to the core of
the story.
Finally, Perrine warns readers to do away with reducing the
theme to a familiar saying like: You can’t judge the book by its cover
or what we sow is what we reap.
B. The Story as a Social Document

The aesthetics of a story is not the be-all and end-all of this art. In fact, significant art, for that matter,
transcends its own and allegorizes into something bigger, something that bespeaks of the human condition.
This is why to see a story wholly in its form and argues endlessly by its artistic merit is to miss partly the
reason for art’s being. Any art is a social document, I believe. Writers, for this matter, no matter how
apolitical and indifferent about their social background, belong to a society whether they like it or not. The
ivory tower where some of them hide, is not a place enough by which one may conceal the unconcealable.
Writers, by their writings, go out into the open and venture beyond their porches.

Frank O’ Connor, when asked of the greatest essential of a story replied: You have to have a
theme, a story to tell...a theme is something that is worth something to everybody (Kennedy 391). This
underscores the fact that an interesting story involves the collective psyche more than the individual; that it
must strike a common chord among us; that it must feel like us as we do like it. They story, then, in this
light, becomes an absolutely and accurately truthful depiction of the social movements in history but in the
sense of the consideration of a gamut of forces and circumstances that surround its creation. BY looking at
the complexities of the many historical and social influences of the work, we are drawn into the relationship
of an art to its milieu. Soledad Reyes in Kritisismo wrote:

Sa historical / sosyolohikal na pananaw, samakatuwid, may kalayaan ang kritiko na

sakupin ang higit na malawak na larangang kontekstwal ng akda. Maissauli niya ang buong
lipunan—political, etikal, cultural, pangkabuhayan, pilosopikal—sa kanyang pagsisikap na
maunawaan ang kanyang paksa (32).

Understanding a story from the perspective of history and sociology brings us to the issues the
writer and his / her art; his / her and its society; the society and its writer. The concept of the zeitgeist ,
(originally espoused by critics Hippolyte Taine and Stael) the prevailing thought / spirit of an era which
determines writings and their themes remains fit and adequate in surveying literature. The way to better
understand the isolation and alienation of Hemingway’s characters in his works is perhaps to account for
Hemingway’s socio-political background, to consider that the war era (WWI and WWII) as well as the
Western culture’s pursuit of material affluence and bravado and its audacity if not propensity to relegate the
individual to the margin has pushed the common man to brink of extinction. His characters suffer and feel
this burden of seeming to contend with such issues as age and emptiness as in A Clean and Well-Lighted
Place or of personal dignity and responsibility in Hills like White Elephants. The same is to be said of Albert
Camus whose The Stranger exemplifies the existential spirit of his time. The issues of a cold, indifferent
world pressed upon man’s will and choices, his actions and its consequences and leaving him to make
sense of his life is brought to the fore in Camus’ fiction. Our very own Manuel Arguilla in such stories Caps
and Lovers Case and Rice sketched the fatal struggles of poor Filipinos amidst hunger and poverty. He
wrote thus:

This afternoon as he continued to climb up the stairs to the editorial room, Santos
soon forgot his anxiety over the pain in his back as his mind reverted to the thought that
during the day had kept him in a state of nervous excitement and dread. It concerned his
decision, made that morning when he left home for work to ask Mr. Reyes, the editor, for
a raise…

Santos, whose family lived in a tiny bedroom, which became stiflingly hot at night and in which the
occasional breaths of wind that found their way through the bedroom window, which opened on a bleak
prospect of quarreling roof-tops of rusting corrugated iron, were like torrid emanations from the throat of a
giant furnace would never get the small amount he wanted to sustain his family. Later, his tubercular tragedy
would culminate in such a passage as:

Then, his eyes blinded with tears, he began the long climb down the stairs.

Or in yet another story entitled “Rice” Arguilla scribbled:

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 “There is no rice, Osiang,” he whispered. He felt too tired and weak to raise his
voice.

He sat on the ladder and waited for his wife and children. He removed his rain-
stained hat of buri palm leaf, placing it atop one of the upright pieces of bamboo supporting
the steps of the ladder. Before him, as far as his uncertain gaze could make out, stretched
the rice fields of the Hacienda Consuelo. The afternoon sun brought out the gold in green
of the young rice plants. Harvest time was two months off and in the house of Pablo there
was no rice to eat…

Some 60 years or so Arguilla stories, the same predicament haunts the Filipino people who seem
t have a habit of committing past errors again and again instead of learning from them. Arguilla is no less
relevant today as he was in his time.

Literary theories, these critical self-reflections, in Eagleton’s lexicon and practices may rise and fall
depending on the need of the people who feed on them. But the facts of the writer’s milieu remain a valuable
tool to examine his/her psyche inasmuch as it has significantly influenced the writing. In fact, some new
and contemporary theories are borne exactly of the many social phenomenon that they attempt to explain
or challenge. Eagleton wrote:

Some of the political struggles of this period were reasonably successful, while others were not.
The student movement of the late 1960’s did not prevent higher education from becoming locked even
deeper into structures of military violence and industrial exploitation. But it posed a challenge to the way in
which the humanities had been complicit in all this; and one of the fruits of this challenge was cultural theory.
The humanities had lost their innocence: they could no longer pretend to be untainted by power… (After
Theory 26-27).

The role of the writer, averred Edilberto Tiempo, is that of a historian and interpreter, legislator,
prophet, feeder of revolutionary ideas, link to a tradition and forerunner of the future, and unifier and
conscience of the race. He jotted:

Perhaps the role of the writer plays the least, whether in times of revolution or not,
is that of a historian. I am not thinking of the role of such men as Herodotus or Thucydides
or Gibbons or Toynbe. The work of historians of the category of these men is part of the
body of literature. I am thinking, rather, of the writer who through fiction, drama, or poetry
reflects the age in which he lives. He adds, subtracts, even distorts in order to put into a
coherent, meaningful pattern an aspect or aspects of his time. Thus we have in Jonathan
Swift the unsparing delineation of a race of Yahoos, the ultimate in human degradation; or
in Cervantes, through the element of ridicule, the reformation of the taste and manners of
his period; or in Rabelais, amidst the huge mass of buffooneries of his work, the plea for
moderation and tolerance, hatred of fanaticism and pedantry, and confidence in the natural
goodness of man.

The writer, he concluded, presents man in all his complexity, he creates man in God’s own image,
creating him to suffer and yet like Prometheus making him at the same time endure ( Literary 35-43).
Fiction no doubt goes beyond sheer aesthetics and illuminates its readers by shedding light on the frailties,
failures, and triumphs of the past and present. But what exactly is the role of fiction or literature is admittedly
difficult to determine. Jonathan Culler, a good three decades ago made this clear:

…We have no convincing account of the role or function of literature in society or social
consciousness. We have only fragmentary or anecdotal histories of literature as an institution: we need a
fuller exploration of its historical reaction to the other forms of discourse through which the world is
organized and human activities are given meaning. We need a more sophisticated and apposite account
of the role of literature in the psychological economies of both writers and readers; and in particular we
ought to understand much more than we do about the effects of fictional discourse. As Frank Kermode
emphasized in his seminal work, The Sense of an Ending, criticism has made almost no progress toward

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a comprehensive theory of fictions, and we still operate with rudimentary notions of dramatic illusion and
identification whose crudity proclaims their unacceptability. What is the status and what is the role of fictions,
or to pose the same kind of problem in another way, what are the relations (the historical, the psychic, the
social relationships) between the real and the fictive? What are the ways of moving between life and art?
What operations or figures articulate this movement? Have we in fact progressed beyond Freud’s simple
distinction between the figures of condensation and displacement? Finally, or perhaps in sum, we need a
typology of discourse which make up the test of intersubjective experience (In Pursuit 6).

To what extent literature affects people is something no critic can conclusively say at the moment.
So as readers grope for answers to the questions posed by Culler three decades ago, they attend to texts
as though they were hungered by its absence and eventually put to extinction but somehow, literature
provides them an alternative means to look at the world around them in a different light and discover in the
process the light within, the soul of our humanity, we may call it.

If awareness and knowledge of being alone is what literature brings us without the benefit of positive
actions that should follow awareness, it is still acceptable. Cirilo F. Bautista put it well when he noted that
literature may just spell the difference between mere and meaningful existence. Literature exposes to us
the many issues of our times: poverty, abuse, exploitation, moral decadence, economic repressions, class
struggle, etc. with such impunity as to tear our hearts and horrow our spirit. Awareness of the many evils
that confront us will prod us to action to evade them, if not defeat, them. The fact that writers write of such
things and readers respond to them in whatever *** ways they can to ameliorate their condition is good
enough. So, as we wait for conclusive theory that informs us of the definitive relations between the fictive
and the real, we acknowledge the virtues of an art that compels us to contemplate.

Critics, readers, criticism, in fact, do contemplate a lot: Especially in a society like ours where
literature is inextricably part of life. Epifanio San Juan Jr. in “Ang Kritika sa Panahon ng Krisis” disclosed:

Hindi tulad sa Kanluran, ang sining at kritika sa mga bansang dumaranas ng mga
rebolusyunaryong pagbabago ay hindi maibubukod sa krisis at kritika sa bawat
pangyayaring nagaganap sa mga lipunang ito (32).

In sum, looking at literature as a historical and social narrative is sociological criticism in essence
which, in the words of Wilbur ScoH, starts with conviction that art’s relations to society are vitally important,
and that the investigation of these relationships may organize and deepen one’s aesthetic response to a
work of art—Art, he continues, is not created in a vacuum; it is the work not simply of a person, but of an
author fixed in time and space, answering to a community of which he is an important, because articulate
part – (five 123) -

References:

Arguilla, Manuel E. How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife and Other Stories. Philippines: De La
Salle University Press Inc., 1998.
Reyes, Soledad. Kritisismo. Quezon City: Anvil Publishing Inc., 1992.

Eagleton, Terry. After Theory. New York: Basic Books, 2003.

Galdon, Joseph A., S. J. et. al., eds., Insight: A Study of the Short Story. Philippines: National Bookstore,
Inc. 1983.

Kennedy, X. J. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. LIttlle Brown and Company,
Canada: 1983.

Perrine, Laurence. Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988.

Scott, Wilbur. Five Approaches to Literary Criticism. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1962.