By Sarah Tarabey

 

Reading historical fiction is, in many ways, like reading action and adventure novels, sci-fi thrillers, or romance series: we read them to take us just far away enough from where we are that we can explore what we know in ways we haven’t yet encountered. But historical fiction also provides us with experiences that other genres cannot.

While actual texts from the past are rich and alive, they can also prove difficult to parse. Have you picked up a copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales lately? If you had, you would soon notice that the Middle English needs more than a little effort to get into. If they haven’t already been translated, most editions gloss several words, which is to say they provide marginal notations of their meaning, and include lengthy contextual explanations for nearly every tale. Ancient and medieval texts remind us that the past is a world unto itself. It’s doubtful that we’ll ever be able to enter such a milieu completely.

But that’s where historical fiction comes in. While we might not know everything that there is to know about a certain time period, writing historical fiction allows us to create worlds which, at least, resemble our understanding of the past. And that’s the key: historical fiction tends to reveal more about what we have taken from times long gone. And a nice Elizabethan backdrop doesn’t hurt, either.

So why else do we tend to gravitate toward this expansive, yet familiar, genre?

 

Social Commentary

Sometimes, all we need is to look at someone else doing the same thing we’re doing in order to gain a deeper understanding of who we are. Framing narratives in history creates an illusion of distance from our current reality. This separation becomes a useful tool for authors. It gives them freer rein to create worlds that closely parallel our own; to get into the psyches of characters who resemble parts of ourselves, or our collective identity; and to comment on or critique actions, ideologies, and events that we struggle with as a society. When reading historical fiction, we aren’t focused on preserving our own egos. Time separates “us” from “them.” For the same reasons, authors of these works feel less pressure to hold back their opinions. They can get away with making striking statements, and in this context, we may be more inclined to agree with them.

 

Rose-Colored Glasses

We tend to romanticize the past as a simpler time. Feel free to replace “simpler” with a bevy of other positive adjectives: more beautiful, more alive, more exciting. Historical fiction sometimes becomes a means for us to escape from the harsh reality of the present. Bemoaning trending short shorts and crop tops, we might marvel at the beautiful fashion of the Victorian aristocracy. We might wish to partake in a revolutionary Salon of the Enlightenment, displaying a Voltairean wit which might not be as well received today. Or we might want to reside in Mesopotamia, that mystical land where everything began, where men and women looked to the skies to foretell the quality of their futures. When we look at a past era, we might think that we would have had more important or fulfilling lives had we lived in that time. Historical fiction responds to our pervasive discomfort with the present. While our fantasies may suffer the limitation of being only partially based in reality, the appreciation that historical fiction awakens within us keeps us coming back for more.

 

Social Media as a Benchmark

Historical fiction fills in a much-needed gap in our collective subconscious for a connection with our past. Sometimes we can find social media overbearing. We feel like we know more than we want to about people leading predictable lives inasmuch as they are usually quite similar to our own. But the details of the everyday lives of people past are relatively unknown to us. And judging from the countless novels written about famous past figures, or purporting to utilize their perspective, we wouldn’t mind reading a play-by-play of their daily activities. The same applies to particularly intriguing time periods. Think of the success of The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory or Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth. We want to know how people used to live in order to gather clues about human nature, and the recurrent themes that unite people across time. Historical fiction provides the characters, the setting, and the conflict to help us bear witness to those themes.

 

Doing More with Less

The past still has barriers that the present has already solved. Consider that even a few decades ago, the internet wasn’t a tool for the masses. Only a hundred years before that point in time did the first gasoline-powered car come out.

How were peoples of the past able to overcome the same problems that plague humanity while working with what we might consider a deficit of knowledge and technology? They came to live, and even thrive, with “less” to work with than we have now. Historical fiction provides us with the stories of the struggles of individuals deeply embedded in the unique strengths and weaknesses of their times. Yet these individuals must still contend with eternal human concerns, striving much like we do today, to understand the purpose and meaning behind life. Historical fiction is unique in its ability to show us how people with capacities similar to our own coped with environments beyond our ability to fully comprehend.

 

 

(allgeektome.net)

By Katharine Everett

Is this 1984? Because it sure feels like George Orwell’s Big Brother has its gaze fixed on the town of Wayward Pines. Everything the residents say, do, and maybe even think seems to be observed by whoever is really in charge. It’s pretty unsettling, but in the best way possible for a TV show. Some mysteries are solved in this episode but even more are created in the process. Now we know the rules of survival in this town but that doesn’t guarantee anyone’s safety, especially Ethan’s. There were a few bumps and bruises as well in this episode, but I’m willing to smooth them over for the sake of the wonderful and creepy story unfolding in episode 2, “Do Not Discuss Your Life Before”.

Hay-Makers:

While there are still many questions left unanswered, this episode gave the audience a bit more information about the way life in Wayward Pines works. Kate Houston, now Kate Ballinger, gives Ethan the three most important rules to know to survive Wayward Pines: 1. Don’t try to escape, 2. Don’t talk about the past, and 3. Always answer the phone. While the last rule seemed quite odd at first, by the end of the episode it made a lot more sense. The townspeople’s sudden abandonment of smiling, peaceful suburbia to hunt down and kill Beverly was abrupt and terrifying in its enactment. The scene really illustrated the true menace of the town and that following the rules is truly a life or death choice.

I also loved the way the episode handled the subtle body language and dialogue that characters in the town have to adopt to communicate with each other under the eyes of whatever Big Brother figure calling the shots. Saying one thing but meaning the other hints at who might secretly be allies for Ethan. For instance, Kate seems particularly helpful to Ethan, although she betrays both him and Beverly at the end, and the Sheriff as well seems outwardly aggressive toward Ethan but also always seems to point him in the right direction. We’ll have to see if either of them become allies for Ethan later on.

Head-Scratchers:

While I thoroughly enjoyed the episode, certain actions and decisions on Ethan’s part seemed farfetched to me. Perhaps he handles situations under pressure differently than most people as a special agent but he doesn’t seem very fazed by the gigantic wall running around the perimeter of the town or the microchip in his skin. In fact, he doesn’t seem to question very much why anything is happening or who is in charge of the town. I thought he might ask more questions of Beverly who has lived there for a year and thus allowed the audience to get a better understanding of the town. I know we’re not supposed to understand everything just yet, but Ethan’s reactions felt a bit unrealistic to me and left me feeling frustrated. His and Beverly’s escape plan also seemed horribly planned out and executed. They couldn’t come up with anything better than what the dead secret agent planned? For me, everything just felt a bit rushed and the characters’ actions didn’t make total sense. Hopefully next episode will improve upon this problem.

Now onto the whacky parts. Seriously, what is up with the time difference in Wayward Pines? That is my biggest question at the moment. Neither Beverly nor Ethan seems to have an explanation or appear very interested in investigating it either. Maybe next episode? Also, is Ethan hallucinating some of the stuff that is going on? The shrink and sheriff certainly seem to want him to think so. It seems we’re dealing with a potentially unreliable narrator in this series. How much is real and how much is delusion? I also want to know the deal with the phones and the rule about not talking about the past. They literally killed Beverly just because she slipped up and mentioned her daughter. Why did they have such an extreme reaction? And why did Kate betray Ethan? She seemed to be helping him up until the dinner party. Did she only do it because her husband was there and she didn’t want to out herself as Ethan’s ally? What will Ethan do now that the town is out for his blood? I can’t wait to see what happens next.

 

(theblackox.com)

By Katharine Everett

Wayward Pines, the new creepy thriller brought to you by Fox, seems like the strange but wonderful offspring of the noire genre and the TV show Lost. Similar to Lost, Wayward Pines follows a formula where the intent is to surprise the viewer with its unusual writing style and plot while greater and smaller mysteries are slowly unraveled over time. This formula is immediately apparent in the first episode, “Where Paradise is Home,” as we meet special agent, Ethan Burke, who wakes up in the middle of the woods with various small wounds and no memory of how he got there. He is supposed to be searching for two missing agents in Idaho—Kate Houston, Ethan’s former partner and mistress (he’s married), and Bill Evans. After stumbling through the woods, Ethan comes across the quaint and creepy town of Wayward Pines, where not everything is as it seems and where the situation quickly goes from bad to worse. We’ll be examining each episode for its “hay-makers” and “head-scratchers” while analyzing the story as it unfolds.

Hay-Makers:
Wayward Pines is brilliantly set up from the beginning to leave its audience with more questions than answers but also desperate for more. Matt Dillon who plays Ethan Burke plays a very believable character who struggles constantly with his confusion and frustration while trying to maintain some semblance of sanity. Another memorable actor is Melissa Leo who plays the very scary nurse, Pam, who is guaranteed to send shivers down the spines of viewers as she threatens the main character with an agonizing surgery with no anesthetic. Besides the many talented actors involved in this show, the set-up of the first episode was done very well. One unsolved mystery after another is presented to the audience and everything feels like it’s on the verge of tipping at any moment. This is certainly a TV show that makes you think and keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Head-Scratchers:
There are almost so many questions that it’s difficult to know where to start. From the beginning, what is the deal with this town? Everyone seems to be in on some big secret that Ethan knows nothing about. How does time work here? The bartender thought she had only been there a year but had actually been there for more than a decade, while Kate, Ethan’s partner, was missing for five weeks but had actually been in Wayward Pines for twelve years! What is going on with the crickets? Ethan found a recording of crickets hidden in a bush and the bartender told him there were no crickets in Wayward Pines. Why is that significant? Who killed the special agent that Ethan found tortured in an abandoned house? Why can’t Ethan leave Wayward Pines and what is up with the gigantic fence that runs around the perimeter? Finally, Adam and the shrink are clearly in on what is happening in Wayward Pines and insinuate that Ethan was chosen for some reason? Is there some sick psychological experiment going on? Who’s behind it? It’s all a bit overwhelming but I’m sure we’ll just have to keep watching if we want any answers.