Fantasy : The Importance Of Fantasy In The Genre Of Fiction

After reading the Harry Potter series, U spent weeks anticipating a letter from a magical school that would reveal that I was in fact a wizard and was invited to attend their classes to learn magic. People tend to enjoy reading fiction so they can live vicariously through the characters in the story. Fiction, despite being “made-up”, often have close similarities to the real world. By taking a closer look at “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, one can infer that fiction reveal a significant amount of truths about human nature.

within a novel. The six components to define magical realism works are; lyrical writing, examination of the character of human existence, criticism of society, especially toward the elite, acceptance of events contrary to the usual operating laws of the universe as unextraordinary, cultural hybridity, and authorial reticence. Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin is categorized under works of magical realism, but does not hold all six characteristics that define a purely magical realistic literary work. Zevin’s Elsewhere retains all the components of a literary work of magical realism except for authorial reticence, which keeps Zevin’s opinions involved with the plot.

For example, one of the elements of fantasy is that the story starts realistic and switches to unrealistic, but then switches back to realism. This element, although hard to recognize was used in this story, but to see it, instead of considering the everyday world then, the reader had to consider Kira’s everyday world. The story starts with Kira grieving her mother in the Field (1). This was an everyday thing for people in Kira’s culture, although it is not a common ritual in society now. Then, the story introduces Kira’s scrap, how she made it without knowing how and how it seemed to speak to her (29).

Imagine, every morning you wake up to the sound of the rooster singing. Not to the normal crow a rooster makes, but to a beautiful sonata that wakes your soul up from a deep slumber. It may not sound too realistic in our real word, but to a writer, this can bring special emphases to the story’s meaning. This literary practice is called magical realism. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines magical realism, or magic realism as they put it; 1) painting in a meticulously realistic style of imaginary or fantastic scenes or images; and 2) a literary genre or style associated especially with Latin America that incorporates fantastic or mythical elements into otherwise realistic fiction. It is the second definition that author Laura Esquivel, incorporates magical realism into her book, Like Water for Chocolate. Many of the themes and emotions in the book are emphasized with the use of Magical realism.

“We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality. We create it to be able to stay,” American author Lynda Barry said this. A fantasy film commonly involves a fantastical, imaginative, fairy tale based world with elements of magic, supernatural, escapism, or myth. Two films that showcase each aspect of the fantasy genre are: Guilermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth and Henry Selick’s Coraline. Pan’s Labyrinth and Coraline, share universal fantasy tropes such as the fantasy world that exist in both films.

Fantasy is a genre that uses supernatural situations as a main plot setting. Fantasy is a measure by which responders can be introduced to important notions in texts. C.S. Lewis’ novel, The Magician’s Nephew explores the creation of Narnia. Lewis explores friendship through the characters of Polly and Digory. The notion of Good vs. Evil and magic are also used throughout the novel and helps us understand the need for fantasy in our own lives.

Fiction is a powerful genre. In McMahon’s “The Function of Fiction: The Heuristic Value of Homer.” She says “(F)iction gives individuals the opportunity to explore a greater range of experiences than are actually available.” This is true on so many levels, fiction can take us to another world or realm or it can alter our reality here on earth. Fiction can pull you out of your day to day and put you somewhere more enjoyable, more exciting, more exotic than that of the four boring white walls of your dark apartment. In films and literature writers take us on adventures to millions of places, they take us to the Wild West for an exhilarating quick draw gunfight, they take us to lush rainforests filled with snakes, apes, and jaguars to find hidden treasures, they can even take us to a faraway castle where we can learn magic and go on ridiculous adventures to fight off an evil dark wizard named Voldemort. These are some situations that we are most likely never going to experience in real life ourselves but we are able to because of fiction. A favorite fiction of roughly 400 million people is the Harry Potter books and movies. This series prompts its readers to live in a world that is much like our own but with a little twist, Magic.

Magical Realism is like an avocado; the use is delicate, smooth and beautiful like the outer cream, it’s life-giving juices fill us with joy and wonder, however the truth and reality of the effects of Magical Realism are hard and gritty like the cold, crude pit. Like Water for Chocolate and The Handsome Drowned man are very similar in the areas where Magical Realism is used to show love and change, however they differ in that the events where Magical Realism is present have opposite effects on the characters in the story.

Especially when imagination is on the loose. The people who write books have a very big imagination. They can think in many different point of views, and in many different realities. Rick Riordan is an example. He first told his son the story of Percy

Four siblings: Lucy, Peter, Susan and Edmund Pevensie are all sent to a faraway house to be safe from the conflicts of World War II. They each step through a wardrobe they discovered and out into the new world of Narnia—a land tyrannized and ruled by the vicious White Witch. Right before almost all hope is lost, the Great Lion— Aslan—returns, bringing with him a new found sense of hope and change. But with great victory, comes great sacrifice.

In Morte d’Arthur, fantasy is used when a hand comes out of the water after Lancelot throws the sword into the water. This is a fantasy because hands do not miraculously appear from the water. Another fantasy is used in the story at the end when it says that King Arthur may or may not be dead. This is a fantasy because King Arthur's son killed him when he hit Arthur in the head, meaning that King Arthur is obviously dead. While in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight fantasy is used because a person cannot be green, people are different shades of brown. Also, another fantasy used in the story is when the Green Knight has his head blown off, but he still survives. This is a fantasy because he should have died after Sir Gawain blew his head off.

There are also the authors that actually mix the fantasy and the reality to a point that it is really hard to see the difference between them, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is said to be the father of this gender called “Magic Realism”, he said that the reason that he sees the world in that particular way of his, is because of the persons

According to my understanding, I can define literature as any form of writing that contains deep meaning, especially in characters, and also presents the view of the author of the piece of literature. It is important to also note that pieces of literature contain artistic value. Works such as fiction, drama, poetry as well as criticism are recognized to contain aspects of artistic value. According to the Russian Literature, written works represent the people together with their language, culture and many other issues over a certain period of time.

Of course, one of the reasons we fall in love with these stories is because they allow us to imagine the unimaginable. We can see ourselves wearing beautiful dresses, singing and twirling about in sumptuous castles, or, as dashing princes, saving the beautiful and virtuous girl; or we can envision exploring other worlds and discovering some of the most unfathomable mysteries of the

Lev Grossman cleverly starts out his article ‘Feeding on Fantasy’ with telling a story. As you are reading it, you have no clue that it is a story, until he tells the knight is an inventor from the real world. By doing this, he quickly introduces the theme of the article, which is fantasy, just