Genevieve Schiltz

Hawthorne Seminar

Dec. 14, 2001

A Lesson Against Absolutes:

“Alice Doane’s Appeal” as Metafiction

            Reading the critics and the multitude of responses that arise from “Alice Doane’s Appeal” furthers my theory that this story’s purpose is to ask questions, not answer them.  However, the desire for unity based on a linear concept where conflict resolution is the final element leads most critics to break apart the complex workings of this story to find an answer to the questions it raises.   These answers fall into three broad categories, and the first category I call “History and the Heart.”  The critics who belong to this category believe that this story illustrates the need to recover and illuminate the past through storytelling that appeals to the heart.  According to Susan Swartzlander, Hawthorne uses this story to prove that “the past, enlivened by the imagination, can accomplish a great deal”(127), which is to “[illustrate] how fiction and history work together” (128).  For Stanley Brodwin, when history and fiction coincide, it “can provide an appeal for those who need absolution because they felt no “sympathy” with the afflicted communities of the past.  History can be redemptive” (125).  The positive effects of this story are so great in Charles Swann’s estimation that his overall opinion takes on the moral tone of John Kennedy when he states, “Art and social change become inextricably linked.  It is no longer a mere question of what the past can do for the present but of what the present should do for the past” (22).  While I do agree that this mode of thinking is expressed in the story, it is an opinion that becomes subverted and placed within an ironic context as the story’s metafictive structure serves to both create conclusions and criticize them simultaneously.  Limiting an analysis to this argument ignores the organic whole of the story.  

            The second school of critics focus in on this ironic and subversive voice in the story; I call this category, “Narration of a Sadistic, Sexually-Deviant Seducer.”  For the sadistic narrator, one must read Mark M. Hennelly, who argues that “the Artist-Narrator perverts the therapeutic impulse, selfishly desiring power by only exposing or, in fact, creating pain, not pleasure” (138).  Hennelly does a thorough and impressive job of cross-referencing this theme throughout Hawthorne’s works; however, limiting this story to this one-sided reading does not allow the reader to understand the purpose behind this sadistic narrator.  Sadism turns to sexual deviance in Mary K. Ventura’s reading of the story.  The secondary narrator is shown to be a seducer who “subconsciously wishes to arouse the girls to an awareness of their own sexuality, a type of rape” (30), while the primary narrator is seducing the reader away from this fact when he metafictional “desexualizes the content and, in some measures, neutralizes our awareness of his own less-than pure, subconscious motives” (31).  While I agree with Ventura that this story has a highly sexual undertone to it, I do not think that it is the primary focus of the story, or that it holds the answers she wants.  R. McClure Smith continues with the idea of narrator as seducer, except that the seductive power comes from the text’s “refusal to be interpreted, its open invitation to the reader to enter the ‘void of the narrative’” (81). Of all the seduction critics, I think Smith is most accurate in her understanding of the story’s ambiguous nature and its lack of conclusions.  Rather than attempting to place meaning on the void, the void becomes the alluring aspect of the narrative.

            The third group of critics shares Smith’s opinion of the ambiguous nature of the story, and so I call this category “Uncertainty is the Truth”.  In an extremely complete and detailed analysis of the story, G.R. Thompson concludes that the only monument that is built by the story is the narrator’s “historical knowledge, and his knowledge of the deceptiveness and uncertainty of knowledge.  [ . . . ] final knowledge of good and evil is uncertain, as uncertain as the difference between legend and history, truth and fiction” (198).  Douglas Robinson also believes uncertainty is an important theme of the work, not a result for poor writing.  He argues that Hawthorne was “concerned with the human tendency to turn useful explanatory fictions into mind-deadening, absolute myths that provoke fanatical persecutions” (218).    According to Robinson, uncertainty produced by fiction and the imagination becomes a means for avoiding fanaticism rather than a fault in the story.

            Unlike many of the other critics, both Thompson and Robinson acknowledge the organic whole of the work and its absence of absolutes rather than polarizing their interpretations to argue for the good of truth or the danger of fiction.  They both also acknowledge the metafictional elements of the story that focus the reader’s attention on the layers of frames.  While these critics confirm Hawthorne’s use of metafiction, I do not think that enough attention is paid to the relationship between the metafictional elements of the story and the themes these elements express.  Examining the metafiction in this work goes beyond an understanding of the structure and narrative techniques.  Metafiction is a theory that incorporates postmodern concepts of fiction and reality into the art of story-making.  In an example of amazingly forward thinking, Hawthorne not only uses metafictional techniques, but he also imbues in his work the postmodern concept of fiction and reality and the constant interplay between the two.  The key to unraveling the mystery that is created by Hawthorne’s blending of fiction and reality in “Alice Doane’s Appeal” is to understand metafiction.

 In this exploration of Hawthorne’s “Alice Doane’s Appeal” and its implementation of metafiction, I will use Patricia Waugh’s book, Metafiction, as well as scholars in the field, Larry McCaffery and Linda Hutcheons.  Waugh’s book is an extensive and well-structured definition of metafiction.  In her opening chapter, “What is metafiction and why are they saying such awful thing about it?”, she defines it as “a term given to a postmodern concept that examines fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality” (2).  An immediate reaction to this theory would be to apply it solely to postmodern works; however, this would be ignoring the far-reaching relevance of this school of thought, as well as disregarding the forward thinking elements of “Alice Doane’s Appeal.”  Waugh believes that “to draw exclusively on contemporary fiction would be misleading, for, although the term “metafiction” might be new, the practice is as old (if not older) than the novel itself.  [ . . . ] metafiction is a tendency or function inherent in all novels” (5).  While William Gass coined the term in the late 1960’s (Currie 1), Hawthorne weaved this approach to fiction writing into his art in the 1830’s.  Analyzing the metafictional elements of this short story offers an insight into Hawthorne as a writer, his relationship with the writing process, and his ideas about reality, fiction, and the interplay between the two.  

Now that is has been established that the art of metafiction existed long before the creation of its title, I will apply the fundamentals of this theory to illustrated that “Alice Doane’s Appeal” fits within the margins of this scheme.  Patricia Waugh’s definition of metafiction is a sound summarization of the idea and a good place to begin this study.  Her assertion that metafiction addresses “the relationship between fiction and reality” has a direct manifestation in this short story. The narrator emphasizes this relationship when he states, “I detained them a while longer on the hill, and made a trial whether truth were more powerful than fiction” (par. 18).  In the self-conscious nature of metafiction, the narrator makes the underlying motivation of his story telling obvious to the reader.  Like all works of metafiction, his purpose is to explore the role fiction plays in the reality of life, and the role reality plays in the creation of fiction.  He makes it clear that the tales within the trial are not the sole focus of the story, but rather the exploration of truth and fiction.

One of the most exercised means of this exploration is the analysis of the literary frames that create the structure of a fictional work.  A frame is the organization of an experience, and in literary terms, the formal conventional organization of a work.  They “are essential in all fiction [ . . . ] and are explicitly laid bare in metafiction” (Waugh 30).  One of Hawthorne’s methods for laying bare these frames is to self-consciously focus attention on the framing device of a story within a story.  At its most basic level, “Alice Doane’s Appeal” is a dual-story narrative combined within the story of an afternoon walk with the narrator’s “two young ladies.”  He creates two frames of varying writing styles with the stated intention of comparing them.  By allowing the skeletal structure of the “fictional” account and the “realistic” account to show through the skin of the story telling process, Hawthorne crafts the opportunity to compare the dueling frames. 

The first of these frames, the fictional story of the Doanes, is introduced to the reader in a highly self-conscious manner.  The narrator relates to the reader information that focuses the attention on the work itself.  He shares with the reader that:

It was one of a series written years ago, when my pen, now sluggish and perhaps feeble, because I have not much hope or fear, was driven by stronger external motives, and more passionate impulses within, that I am fated to feel again.  Three or four of these tales had appeared in the “Token”, after a long time and various adventures, but had encumbered me with no troublesome notoriety, even in my birthplace.  One great heap had met a brighter destiny: they had feed the flames; [ . . .].  The story now to be introduced, and another, chanced in kinder custody at the time, and thus, by no conspicuous merits of their own, escaped destruction (par. 5).

With this passage, the text as a work of art becomes a presence in the story.  The self-consciousness of this narrative insertion draws attention “to its status as an artefact” since it creates a history for the story. The narrator shares with the reader the conception and creation of the story, the publication and less than grand inception into society, and the close encounter with death by fire. Larry McCaffery states in his essay, “The Art of Metafiction”, that metafiction “takes as its main subject writers, writing, and anything else which has to do with the way books and stories are written” (183).  Before the story has even been related to the ladies and to the reader, its status as a written manuscript with a past has been firmly established. The reader understands that this piece of fiction is a work of art that is a result of the fiction-making process.

            The self-conscious revelation of the frame continues in this fictitious tale with increased frequency and more direct relations with the story-telling process.  In a self-conscious structure, the reader is reading the story about the narrator retelling a tale for his two companions.  As is common in postmodern works, the framing in this short story takes on a Chinese box structure (Waugh 30).  Within the Doane story frame are two frames acting together: the ladies being told the story orally and the reader reading the narrator’s account of telling the story.  This structure serves to distance the reader and be a constant reminder of the other “listeners” and the text within a text.  One of “the defining characteristic of metafiction, [ . . . ], is its direct and immediate concern with fiction-making itself” (McCaffery 182).  By uncovering these frames within a frame, the reader is made conscious of the fiction-making process.  Instead of focusing on the tales, the reader’s immediate contact is with the telling of the tales.   

When the narrator is recounting the story of the Doanes, he switches between allowing the reader to enter the story that is being told to the ladies, and placing the reader outside the story.  By doing this, the frame is hidden within the story one moment, and uncovered the next. According to Waugh, “One method of showing the function of literary conventions, of revealing their provisional nature, is to show what happens when they malfunction.  [ . . . ]  The alternation of frame and frame-break (or the construction of an illusion through the imperceptibility of the frame and the shattering of illusion through the constant exposure of the frame) provides the essential deconstructive method of metafiction” (31).  The construction of illusion is illustrated in the first paragraph of the Doane tale, which creates immediate intrigue by recounting the details of the murder scene.  The narrator provides a chilling description of the body and of “an early traveler, whose dog had led him to the spot” fleeing in fright from the features of the corpse which “a look of evil and scornful triumph had hardened on them, and made death so life-like and terrible” (par. 7).  Having only been given this brief but dramatic access to the mystery, the reader is suddenly shut out from the story with the words, “I read on, and identified the body as that of a young man” and “The story described, at some length, the excitement caused by the murder” (par. 8).  The narrator draws the barrier of the self-conscious fiction-making process up between the reader and the tale.  The frame of the narrator telling a tale to his two companions and the frame of the reader reading this tale are in opposition within the larger frame of the work as a whole.  This opposition, which switches between enticing and isolating the reader, creates a tension; this tension serves as a constant reminder of the frames within the story and the process of story telling and writing.

            As the story of Alice and Leonard Doane continues, the narrator proceeds with the metafictional technique of exposing the frames. In the similar fashion of the above revelation of the frame, the narrator leads into the next paragraph of story’s development by stating, “In the following passage, I threw a glimmering light on the mystery of the tale” (par. 8).  While the intention of distancing the reader with this narrative intrusion is the same, the technique is different.  Rather than closing the reader off from details of the story by changing frames, the narrator draws increased attention to the frame of the writer creating a story.  This comment by the narrator makes the fictitiousness of the tale obvious. According to Waugh, metafictional writing “explicitly and overtly lays bare its condition of artifice” (4).  Hawthorne uses this metafiction technique when the creative impulses of the artist are exposed for the reader to understand and explore. By giving the reader access to the intentions of the artist, the reader is allowed into the fiction-making aspect of the story, which is unknown to the ladies.  Access to the creative mind keeps the reader’s distance from the tale by emphasizing one frame over the other, which in turn keeps that self-conscious thread of this short story visible.

            As the narrator ends the telling of the Brome story, the self-consciousness of this work reaches its height when the narrator shares with the reader the purpose behind the dual-frame structure. As the short story breaks away from the first frame and enters into the second one, he states that his intention in the second frame of the structure is to test “whether truth [is] more powerful than fiction” (par. 18).  With this simple statement he has not only allowed the reader to believe that the intention behind the short story is understood, but he also creates categories for both of the frames.  The Doane frame has been directed labeled a fiction, and the frame to come has been clearly termed “the truth.”  With this statement in mind, the narrator creates in the reader a belief that these two frames are in opposition with each other and competing for effectiveness.  Truth and fiction are separated into two attempts as the trial continues into its second phase.  However, with this clear delineation in the mind of the reader as the second frame begins, the expectation is that the narrator will relate the history of the hill to which he has brought the ladies.  Facts will replace creations of the imagination, as truth will substitute fiction.

            Due to the highly self-conscious nature of the first frame and the revelation of the purpose, the reader enters into this “truthful” account as a rather savvy observer.  The distance created by the frame breaking allows the reader to pay attention to the technique being implemented in the narrating.  With this heightened sense of observation, the reader is able to detect that the narrator subverts the expectation for fact over fiction by adding flourishes of fancy and imagination to his truthful account.  At the beginning of this second frame, when the attention is brought back to the town stretched out before the narrator and the ladies, the clarity that is normally associated with truth is replaced with “an indistinctness [which] had begun to creep over the mass of buildings and blend them with the intermingled tree-tops” (par. 19).  The daylight that was present in the fictional frame is replaced with “twilight over the landscape [that] was congenial to the obscurity of time” (par. 19).  In this shadowy and unclear setting, the narrator states, “With such eloquence as my share of feeling and fancy could supply, I called back hoar antiquity, and bade my companions imagine an ancient multitude of people” (par. 19).  The uses of words such as feeling, fancy, and imagine raise questions about the nature of this frame.  While the narrator states that he will be using truth in this half of the trial, his description of his truth-telling process places his intention in question.  As he proceeds to describe the multitudes that made up the Witch Trials, the veracity of the description is called into question.  Can truth still exist in the presence of eloquence built on “feeling and fancy?”  It is this question that is at the heart of metafiction, and the narrator creates a postmodern situation when he brings into question the relationship between reality and fiction.

            As the story proceeds, the narrator includes a character that lends some credence to the historical truth of this frame.  Pulling from the annuls of history, the narrator places Cotton Mathers “in the rear of the procession” (par. 20).  However, his description of this historic figure “as the representative of all the hateful features of his time; the one blood-thirsty man, in whom were concentrated those vices of spirit and errors of opinion that sufficed to madden the whole surrounding multitude” (par. 20) resonates strongly with feeling and imagination rather than fact.  The portrayal of this famous personality has more to do with evoking the emotions of the listener than with bringing the man from 150 years ago alive in a factual account.  He becomes the vessel in which to place all the horrors of the past.  By concentrating all the “vices” and “errors” into one character, the narrator is able to infuse the actual with the power of fiction.

            When the historical retelling of the Gallows Hill tragedy reaches its apex, the narrator makes two choices that put into question whether the frame of truth ever created a realistic depiction.  First, after he brings this frame to the hilltop, he states, “I plunged deeper into my imagination for a blacker horror, and a deeper woe, and pictured the scaffold” (par. 20).  One’s imagination is an excellent place to find horror and woe; however, it is also the place from which fiction, rather than truth, comes.  The intention of this frame was supposed to be to put aside fiction and focus solely on using truth to arouse the emotions of the two ladies.  Excavating into the mind of the narrator for terror inducing flourishes is a fictional technique, not a means to discover facts. 

            The second choice the narrator makes that calls into questions the validity of categorizing this second frame as truth is the exemption of the conclusion of the story.  He creates tragic images of the accused and horrific images of the accusers, he places Cotton Mathers in the midst of the madness, and he walks with these personages from the past up to the hilltop.  Yet, he stops the story at its most vital point.  When his “companions seized an arm on each side; their nerves [ . . . ] trembling” (par. 21), he allows this interruption to bring about the end of recounting the truth.  The story is cut short, never advancing to the scaffold scene or the outcome of the tragedy.  He believes that “the past had done all it could”(par. 21); however, the past is sorely incomplete.  The truth of this second frame appears more like a fear-inducing endeavor than a recovery of the actuality of the event.

            While the narrator seems to be satisfied with the outcome of his trial, the reader is left with fundamental questions about truth, fiction, and their place in this story.  By using the metafictional technique of uncovering the frames within the story, the reader is given a distance that allows observation.  Due to the self-conscious attention paid to the narrator, his creation of the stories, and his intentions behind his creations, the reader is able to step outside the work and create an addition frame of interpretation within the Chinese box structure.  This metafictional aspect of the story “forces [the reader] to consider the book [they] are reading as an artefect, undercutting the realistic impulses of the work and turning it into a ‘self-reflexive’ creation in that it not only takes art as its subject but tries to be its own subject” (McCaffery 183).  With the story in the center of the study, the reader is given the task of examining the text and the role it plays.  Its structure and its implementation of narrative techniques come under close examination because of its self-conscious projection of itself as a subject.

            By building the structure of the trial between truth and fiction, the story appears to use traditional narrative techniques.  In her essay, “Historiographic Metafiction”, Linda Hutcheon states that “the process of narrativization has come to be seen as a central form of human comprehension, of imposition of meaning and formal coherence on the chaos of events.  Narrative is what translates knowing into telling” (89).  However, metafiction does not follow the traditional narrative style.  Instead in metafiction “narrative conventions are both installed and subverted.  The refusal to integrate fragments [. . . ] is a refusal of the closure and telos which narrative usually demands” (89).  Creating a trial between truth and fiction and then completely blending the distinction between the two is an example of subverting the narrative conventions.  By having the narrator state, “The past had done all it could” (par. 21), after providing the reader with an imaginative and incomplete treatment of the past breaks apart any meaning and cohesion.  The story is kept in its fragmented style, and no meaning is posited on the structure.  Categorization is undermined and neither fiction nor truth has been deemed more powerful.

            While the reader is not given an answer to the question posed about truth and fiction, the story does provide a fundamental question.  What is reality?  In a summarization of Peter L. Begner and Thomas Luckmann’s ideas, Waugh states that “reality is not something that is simply given.  ‘Reality’ is manufactured” (51).  In her own words, she states that “metafictional writing is both a response and contribution to a [ . . . ] sense that reality and history are provisional: no longer a world of eternal verities but a series of constructions, artifices, impermanent structures” (4).  By stating the purpose that fiction and truth will be polarized, and then blending the two together, this story illustrates that reality and truth are not permanent states that can be broached.  What is considered reality in one frame of mind is shown to be fiction in another.  Within the conglomeration of frames that create “Alice Doane’s Appeal”, the truth upon which reality is based is impermanent.  Fiction and truth cannot be polarized because reality is the organic combination of both of these elements.  Rather than existing in a linear fashion with one at each end of the line, fiction and truth are part of the circular relationship, making it impossible to find the beginning of one and the end of the other.  There is no side to take, only a vast void within the circle that the imagination fills with possibility.  Metafiction realizes that this circular pattern creates impermanence because a new creation is always possible in the void.  The interplay between truth and fiction creates questions not answers.

            This concept weaves itself into all the frames.  Leonard Doane struggles throughout the Doane frame to understand the reality of the psychosexual triangle that exists between Alice, Walter, and himself because he wants permanence in the relationships.  He wants Alice to be pure and always by his side, but Walter challenges this continuity when he “taunts him with indubitable proofs of the shame of Alice” (par. 10).  No longer can Leonard be sure about what is true and what is fiction.  The question between whether Alice’s purity is a fictional creation of his imagination, or a reality that Walter attempts to tarnish with his fictional taunts creates an internal conflict that leads Leonard to strike out at the person who threatens his grasp on reality.  Immediately after Walter had assaulted Leonard with his taunts, “and before the triumphant sneer could vanish from his face” Leonard kills Walter (par. 10).  Leonard wants a linear division between truth and fiction, and stability in his knowledge.  The possibility that there is “no longer a world of eternal verities” causes a violent reaction to destroy the core of the instability.  However, his attempt to destroy that which threatens his belief of his sister’s purity fails.  Fiction and reality have been interwoven in his mind, and he is “now tortured by the idea of his sister’s guilt, yet sometimes yielding to a conviction of her purity” (par.12).  This shift in his reality leads Leonard to the wizard in an attempt to reconstruct a sense of truth, polarized truth.  However, the wizard holds one more fact that will once again shake Leonard’s reality, and show him that the reality by which he lives his life is unstable.

            In the very brief synopsis of this tale, the reader discovers that Leonard learns from the wizard that he “had cunningly devised that Walter Brome should tempt his unknown sister to guilt and shame, and himself perish by the hand of his twin-brother” (par. 17).  With this revelation, the reality that Leonard, Alice, and Walter have been living is shown to be artificial.  The divulgence of this knowledge shows Leonard’s role as the jealous brother to his sister’s threatening love interest, and Alice and Walter’s relationship of non-sibling intimacy to be fictitious construction in the wizard’s creation.  Their reality is suddenly transformed into a performance devised by the will of the wizard.  The stability of reality has been completely destroyed as the basis for their actions are shown to be a manipulation of the wizard.  He manufactures their reality, then ruins the reality by illustrating that it is provisional.  The only certainty about reality and fiction is that there is danger in believing in absolutes in either one. This tragically fated triangle was caught in the midst of the interplay between truth and fiction.

            This same reciprocation exists in the frame of the narrator and the reader.  There is no absolute truth separate from fiction because fiction resides with the truth.  By clearly labeling the two frames, the narrator manufactures the reality based on the impossibility of dividing truth and fiction.  Leonard’s inability to accept the gray area where fiction and truth intermingle led to violence and destruction.  The result would be the same if the reader were to follow in Leonard’s way.  If the reader attempts to separate truth from fiction and posit a judgement on which is more important, the affect on the story as a whole would be disastrous.  The organic, circular relationship between truth, fiction, and all the frames would be broken in the attempt to make the story linear.  Each frame of this story fits within each other.  The Doane frame and the witch trial frame exist because of their relationship with each other; both of these frames exist because of the narrator and his two companions; the narrator exists because of the reader.  An attempt to divide truth from fiction would destroy the story.  Its existence comes from the acceptance that fiction is always present in truth as they circle around each other.  Reality is the combination of both these forces, and the attempt to believe in absolute truth or absolute fiction has calamitous consequences.

            A tragic example of the danger of thinking in absolutes is the Salem Witch Trials.  This horror of our American past was a result of fiction and truth becoming polarized.  The result of polarization is that the fictional elements in truth are ignored, and truth becomes absolute.  “Alice Doane’s Appeal” offers the reader an opportunity to understand the type of thinking that creates witch-hunts by creating a trial within the text.  Taking a side in this trial is paramount to killing the story.  Like the trial of truth and fiction in “Alice Doane’s Appeal”, the witch trials attempted to separate truth from fiction and make a decision.  The accused knew that fiction was completely imbued within the truth that was being presented; however, the accusers were those who wanted absolutes and who wanted to believe in truth that did not contain fiction.  Destruction of human life ensued when truth was categorized as pure, and the fiction within was ignored. 

If readers accept the narrator’s ostensive outcome of the trial that concludes that truth, which appeals to the heart, is more powerful than fiction, then they are standing on similar grounding as the witch hunters. Douglas Robinson believes that what is missed in this belief “is that the witch-hunters in the story could have argued that their position was equally defensible on precisely the same ground of memory and heart: their heartfelt Puritan faith and conscience, educated by the cultural memory of evil operative in the world, unambiguously told them that the human minions must be destroyed” (216).  Appealing to the heart without an acknowledgement of the importance of fiction is where the danger arises.  The witch-hunters heart-felt fear of evil caused them to limit their thinking to one possibility.  They chose a side in their linear thinking rather than acknowledging the void of possibility within the circle of truth and fiction.  When fiction is acknowledged as a constant presence in reality, than the imagination is released from confining thinking, with the “inevitable effect [being] to expand vision and prevent the adoption of a single view of absolute truth.  A liberated imagination can conceive of human evil as channeled through witches, [ . . . ]; but it can also envision a wealth of alternative possibilities and thus acts to unrammel the absolute mindset that produces fanaticism” (Robinson 216-217).  When truth and fiction are polarized and an appeal to the heart is made without allowing the imagination to see the fictional within the truth, than a fanatically limited interpretation is produced.  The circle is destroyed and fiction’s ability to create many possibilities is replaced with one damning interpretation of the situation.

 By implementing metafictional techniques that drawn attention to the story’s “status as artefact”, Hawthorne creates fiction that is a commentary on its relationship with reality.  Reading this story forces the reader to give up all attempts to place reality within linear boundaries.  By placing one frame within another, the story becomes a whirlpool of ideas and stories where truth and fiction reside side by side in their organic unity.  One of the results of this whirlpool structure is that it does not terminate with an answer posited at the end.  As a metafictional study of writing and fiction, this story poses the question about the relationship between reality and fiction, and leaves the ambiguous monument of itself as an answer that only leads to more questions.  However, it is the questioning that is the key to this relationship.  When no one is considering where truth is in the fictional and where the fictional is in truth, then dangerous absolutes start to define reality. “Alice Doane’s Appeal” never answers its own question of whether “truth is more powerful than fiction” because fiction’s purpose is to create possibilities, not produce answers.  When the world, whether in fiction or reality, is viewed in black and white, us and them, truth and fiction terms, then imagination turns into fanaticism and the horrors of Gallows Hill threaten to repeat themselves.