Friday, 20 October 2023

Why Equating Fiction with ‘Lies’ is Illogical

A lie is when something that isn’t true is claimed to be true. Presenting something as the whole truth whilst knowing it’s not so (as in a white lie) can be included in this definition.

 

Fiction doesn’t claim truth: it’s a celebration of the unreal. Fiction inherently and outwardly knows it’s not true. It acknowledges this with the very label of ‘fiction’, something reinforced by the declaration before the story that any resemblance to reality is coincidental. Fiction goes out of its way to deny it’s truthful.

 

If fiction distances itself from being truth, and lies are an attempt to be seen as truth, fiction and lies are opposites and thus cannot be equated as the same thing.

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