Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
As Jeanette, the protagonist of Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, states, “time is a great deadener.” (93) Essentially, as time passes, people will inherently forget crucial details of history, allowing for various interpretations and even inaccuracies to be perpetuated. The aforementioned Oranges, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia, and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart all explore, in some capacity, how certain people or events from the past are “immortalized” in modern societies, and how individuals or groups interact with history in general. Each of these works contends with the idea of the passage of time in some way, and how this passage can change the perceived meaning of one’s situation.
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At one point in the novel, she theoretically discusses storytelling as a method of preserving history, stating that “people like to separate storytelling which is not fact from history which is fact” and that “they do this so that they know what to believe and what not to believe.” (93) History in itself is “malleable” - people cannot change it, but they can portray past events and people in a manner fitting their motivations. People “make [stories] what [they] will” to suit their own needs and beliefs, even if that means denying the past - after all, “the dead don’t shout.” (94) The number of people who have lived on Earth, and, therefore, the number of perspectives that have existed is inconceivable; comparatively, only a few of these people, and a few of the events relating to them, are memorialized in popular retellings of history. This concept is particularly evident in Slaughterhouse Five through the “outside” perspective of the Tralfamadorians; Charles Darwin, for example, is “most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind,” due to his teachings of natural selection. The Tralfamadorians, who are able to see the past, present, and future simultaneously, would appreciate the idea that “those who die are meant to die,” since they have also accepted that they cannot change the events they see.
At one point in the novel, she theoretically discusses storytelling as a method of preserving history, stating that “people like to separate storytelling which is not fact from history which is fact” and that “they do this so that they know what to believe and what not to believe.” (93) History in itself is “malleable” - people cannot change it, but they can portray past events and people in a manner fitting their motivations. People “make [stories] what [they] will” to suit their own needs and beliefs, even if that means denying the past - after all, “the dead don’t shout.” (94) The number of people who have lived on Earth, and, therefore, the number of perspectives that have existed is inconceivable; comparatively, only a few of these people, and a few of the events relating to them, are memorialized in popular retellings of history. This concept is particularly evident in Slaughterhouse Five through the “outside” perspective of the Tralfamadorians; Charles Darwin, for example, is “most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind,” due to his teachings of natural selection. The Tralfamadorians, who are able to see the past, present, and future simultaneously, would appreciate the idea that “those who die are meant to die,” since they have also accepted that they cannot change the events they see.