Something that really struck me in our discussion this week was discussing the author’s decision to make this book fiction. It is entirely possible that he could have told the same story, but done it in nonfiction form. He could have written it journalistically, or an anthropology piece about the cultures of the island and the effects that oil companies have had. However, he made the choice to write a fictional account, and I think this choice gave the entire piece a lot of power.
It’s hard to get people to change their minds. It’s hard to get people to listen to an opinion or an idea that they don’t share. This article goes into depth about just how impossible it is to get people to change their minds when presented with factual information. And that’s a problem that America is coming to face with in a spectacular way right now. We have two sides of society who hear entirely different stories, who consume different ‘facts,’ and who live in different realities. If we are going to continue as a society, it’s absolutely paramount that we somehow join these two worlds, that we start recognizing that we do in fact live in one world, with one set of facts. But how do we do that if it’s impossible to reason with people? I would argue that storytelling is our most powerful tool.
The article talks about how after we have our formed beliefs, we don’t want to change them, that in fact we often refuse to consider evidence that would refute our own beliefs. What it doesn’t mention is how those beliefs are formed in the first place. I would argue that our beliefs are built upon the foundation of our experiences. I know the way my world works, I know because I’ve seen it. But what about people who don’t see the whole world? What about people who live in only one place, and don’t have the ability or opportunity to leave that place and understand other ways of living? How do those people get the opportunity to expand their knowledge of the world, and in doing so expand their beliefs and understandings of the way the world works? I argue that storytelling is a powerful tool for exploring those possibilities.
And storytelling can be fictional or nonfictional, but it has to be truthful. It has to truly open your mind and your understanding to things that you would never have the opportunity to experience first hand. And that can be through reading a novel about a place on the other side of the globe, or reading a magazine article about a community across the city from you. And I think that the choice to make the novel “Oil on Water” fictional allowed Helon Habila to tell a true story in a way that deeply impacted his readers. They not only saw what was happening, the way an article allows for, but they understood the feelings and emotions that those events induced. In doing so, Habila opens up a whole new world to his audience. A whole new world they never would have experienced otherwise.
