Forgotten Fire By Adam Bagdasarian Analysis

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Historical fiction is a very controversial genre for avid readers or historians. This is because there are many different ways for an author to write a historical fiction novel. An author can chose to focus more on the historical accuracy of the novel or more on the fiction aspect of their story. But the overall intention of historical novels are to explain historical events in ways that will not only inform the audience but also educate them. Forgotten Fire by Adam Bagdasarian is a historical novel centered around the life of Vahan Kenderian during the Armenian genocide of the eighteenth century. The story takes place as Vahan grows up and struggles to survive in the Ottoman Empire. Vahan came from a privileged and powerful family that during …show more content…
This is because their own lifes easily influence any author’s writing. They can also have certain ideas that they have made about the historical event. The context of historical novels can easily be altered by the author's perspective, and their opinions on historical events or issues. “These, of course, are filtered through the author's contemporary sensibilities. Some critics have insisted that historical fiction reveals more about its author than its historical subject, or, as Henry Seidel Canby has said, historical fiction is "more likely to register an exact truth about the writer's present than the exact truth of the past.” (Brown) Writers commonly take their own experiences and opinions and incorporate them into their prices. More often than not this is where authors get the plot or major plot points for their story, which can easily alter the historical accuracy if they are writing historical fiction. This is because events from there own life would most likely not fit into the time period they are writing about. “Applying the writer’s biography to one’s reading of a novel strikes me as less a matter of cheating or impurity than an additional, incidental pleasure: Ah, I know where that came from … For as soon as we identify two works by the same person, we begin to make connections between them — to notice similarities of subject and theme, treatment and technique.” …show more content…
“Forgotten Fire is based on the true story of Adam Bagdasarian great-uncle during the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Bagdasarian uncle, Vahridj Kenderian made a tape of his experiences during the genocide shortly before his death in America.” (librisnotes) Forgotten Fire is one of the few historical fiction books that has a truly credible source. And although the story told by Bagdasarian is not the exact accounts of his great-uncle, he did use enough exact details to share his story. The aspects of history that Bagdasarian changed were not enough to effect the history of the Armenian genocide itself, but only the fictional character he based off the tapes. For example, Bagdasarian kept the history of Istanbul true. “Armenian Genocide survivors are Western Armenians who were not killed in the Genocide of 1915. Most of the survivors became refugees outside Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire. About 70,000 Armenians remain in Turkey, mostly in Istanbul.” (Wikipedia) The fact that now Istanbul used to be constantinople during the Armenian genocide is important. Constantinople is where many Armenians refugees, including Vahan and his sister in Forgotten Fire. This is an example of how Bagdasarian was able to keep historical accuracy in his story but still entertain. “But

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