Fiction in Truth

I really like what Caleb said in this post when describing Piya’s and Kanai’s distinct narrations in Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide:  “We can only see “what happened” through each pair of eyes”. This made me think not only of the truth in fiction (which is what Caleb was exploring in his blog post) but also how “truth” is inherently subjective, inherently “fictitious”. One person’s “truth”--the way that the world unfolds through their eyes--is inherently different than another’s because “truths” are informed by a person’s lived experiences. This creates complexities, complications, and tensions in narratives.

In Ghosh’s article “Wild Fictions” he also explores the outcome of many truths overlapping (which is a more informed version of the “truth”, but also subjective in its own way): “Despite the differences between Blyth's narrative and Saint-Pierre's there are also many parallels and intersections...Where the visions coincide is that in both, Nature is uncontaminated by people: it is a domain defined by the exclusion of human beings. Thus did Nature come to be imagined as an Eden too perfect for the fallen progeny of Adam and Eve”. Ghosh is able to interpret this “truth” based on the parallels of these narratives and also inputting his own lived experience and knowledge. He asks us, the reader, to do the same while reading The Hungry Tide. Ghosh gives the reader the responsibility of finding these overlaps and parallels of different truths in the text and encourages us to reach our own conclusions.