History and Fiction

In what ways is history like fiction?

1.     Historical ‘facts’ are not valid and relevant anymore because of disciplinary boundaries in historiography.

2.     History as a textual product involves both ‘finding’ and ‘invention’ by an author who is himself subject to ideology.

3.     Fiction narrates for now from a time other than now. Likewise, history seeks solutions to today's issues in the past.

4.     History is a textual interpretation of the past, and yet, this text is open to interpretation.

In what year are The Children of the King set? How did you work this out? What does the novel say about history?

There is no indication in The Children of the King that London bombardment had begun. In World War II, Germans bombardments against London started in September 1940. Furthermore, in the novel, May says that her father “went to France,” (p.38) to defend that country. By mid-1940, the French resistance had come to an end. The story tells of evacuation just prior to the bombardment which happened after falling of France. Therefore, The Children of the King is set in 1940, precisely in the “summer” (p.42). The small conflicts between characters in the story and the big war between the countries are intertwined to demonstrate that everything is connected, and history is a concomitant result of interactions between people throughout the time.

Zohar Shavit on "I Was a Rat"

This is a short outline of Zohar Shavit's analysis and her arguments and interpretations on the story I Was a Rat. Shavit's work was published in the book titled The Concept of Childhood and Children's Folktales by Norton, New York in 1999. 

1.     Historically there was no distinction between children and adults because life was considered as analogous to that of nature.

2.     Then, children perceived as delicate needed protection and education according to pedagogical goals that demanded books.

3.     Upper-class regarded folktales “childish”, and yet they enjoyed but only vicariously through children.

4.     For social acceptance, authors called children as an official audience, by the mid-nineteenth century this was not possible as the child was distinct from the adult with special needs and abilities.

5.     Childhood determines folktales change and purposes, e.g. “educational” concept replaced “amusement”.

Featuring pages of the local paper “The Daily Scourge” in I Was a Rat, one can use Shavit’s argument to analyse the story in the way it refers to how media draw public attention by providing false information which is the dominance contemporary phenomenon.