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What Do You
Mean, Hermione
Granger’s Not
Real?
civilisations believed in. We’ll use the most well-known Greek gods
as our example, though this goes for Norse, Egyptian, Chinese,
Indian, Aztec, Mayan and just about any cultural gods out there.
The Ancient Greeks believed wholeheartedly in their gods to
the extent that they day-to-day lifestyle revolved around their
beliefs – they’d sacrifice their oxen and food to the gods, they’d hold
ceremonies, superstitions and traditions in their honour. It used to
be that if someone reached the central hearth of a Greek village,
that village was honour-bound to protect that person, as the
goddess of the hearth, Hestia, decreed. So if, for argument’s sake,
we say that the Greek gods were not real because they didn’t have
physical bodies or because they didn’t really ‘happen’, does that
mean the beliefs of the Ancient Greeks were not real either? Does
that mean their lives weren’t real at all? How can something ‘not
real’ be the basis of our real world?
Speaking of falseness laying the foundation for reality,
The
Truman Show
directed by Peter Weir explores this concept quite
thoroughly. I found it interesting to hear my classmates’ responses
to the question posed by our teacher; ’Was Truman’s world real?’
Most first reacted quickly by disagreeing, though a few seconds later
would amend it by saying “Well… it was real to him because it’s all
he’s ever known.” Which got me thinking, does that mean reality is
simply knowing something? Getting used to something? Are we
confusing reality for normalcy?
In Truman’s mind, his world is his reality. However, in the minds
of the viewers it isn’t, it’s ‘just a TV show’. How about the Christof?
Is it his reality? It’s something he is heavily invested in; it’s always on
his mind and it must be real to him. What of the actors? They may
not see Truman as their real husband/friend/son/neighbour. But
their characters are still real to them, because that’s their job. Their
real-life job.
With the definition of reality and imagination blurred as so, I’d
like to propose the notion that book and movie characters are, in
fact, real. Many an author have jokingly observed that their
characters seem so real to them, they often forget that they’re not
people. Last year at the 2015 Reading Matters Convention, author
Jaclyn Moriarty shared with the audience the time she went to the
supermarket and subconsciously bought pretzels for the character
in the book she was writing at the time, saying “I got to the counter
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