The Writer's Duty Essay

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Recommended: Literature as a mirror of life is what

Subjective Reality: The Writer’s Duty Essay William Faulkner described in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize that writing is a form of creation using the human spirit that allows mankind to endure and prevail (Faulkner 872). It is possible that a life can be saved, and even more so extended, by keeping the spirit alive and writing a life for the person (O’Brien 233). In order to do this, a writer must not only use abstractions, but make them objective through the purpose that he or she gives them, whether or not the actual story is true. Creating these solidified truths is done partly through the writer, but the reader must breathe the vital breath of life into the story, and that way can make it last forever (Nabokov 974). It is …show more content…

Compassion, sacrifice, endurance, courage, honor, hope, and pride are all concepts that are believed to be the old verities that are essential to each piece of writing in order to produce work that is worth the effort and significant to the reader, who must reciprocate and understand the meaning (Faulkner 872). To make these truths apparent, it may be necessary to exaggerate what really happened for what was actually felt, and using schemes like imagery, can make the reader fully grasp the meaning behind the shallow sentences on the page. As Tim O’Brien explains while exploring the significance and content involved with telling a true war story, “Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (O’Brien 80). The truth behind a story relies solely on the reason the story is being told, and the answer to that oftentimes lies in what feelings the story brings about. The emotions give the reader insight into the conflicts of the human condition, which is all the writer can hope to

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