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TRB EXAM-Dr.Johnson's ''ON FICTION'' Easy Summary & Quotes in 5 Mins-In Tamil- Literary Criticism

Samuel Johnson – “On Fiction” (essay from “The Rambler”) Johnson observes that while art is supposed to imitate life, it shouldn’t imitate ALL of it, because the whole point of art is about being selective; otherwise, we might just look at the world. So it’s not a justification if the author describes morally objectionable characters because there are morally objectionable people in real life. It’s not that Johnson doesn’t want to read about bad characters ever (because such stories would be very boring), but that the purpose of depicting evil is to show the young and innocent how to defend themselves, without encouraging them to imitate it. Many writers create characters whose good qualities are so endearing that the readers feel ready to forgive them their bad ones. The Helpful Footnote indicates that Johnson maybe meant Smollett’s Roderick Random and Fielding’s Tom Jones, but we could equally well think about the whole spate of the “anti-heroes” of modern TV ( Tony Soprano etc. They tended to be men, although of late this has started to change.) Such people should not be described, Johnson says sternly, even if similar people do exist; their lives do not deserve any more to be passed down than “the art of murdering without pain.” But some people claim virtues spring from the same sources as vices; Swift wrote that some people are “grateful in the same degree as they are resentful.” Johnson’s answer to that is that we also have reason, and even if the passions spring from the same source, it doesn’t mean that both of them should be indulged. Moreover, he doesn’t really believe that the source is the same, for instance resentment comes from pride, and if you are too proud, you can’t be really grateful, because being grateful means you feel obligated towards somebody, i.e. inferior. He ends by calling for writing about perfectly virtuous characters in fiction, not angelic, because mortals can’t imitate angels, but human, tried in various tribulations and teaching the readers what they can do as well. Vice, on the other hand, should be always described as disgusting, because “there are thousands of the readers of romances willing to be thought wicked, if they may be allowed to be wits.”. So virtue should be portrayed always as “the highest proof of understanding” and vice as the result of “narrow thoughts”.