Lee Smiths Oral History, a Depiction Intricacies and Complexities of Essay

Lee Smiths Oral History, a Depiction Intricacies and Complexities of History - Essay Example And perhaps the point of the entire novel is to show readers the different facets of history, making it both rich and confusing; a field which is definitely more than just a simple narration of events in the past. Oral History is deemed by many not only to be Lee Smith's most popular novel, but more importantly her most complex work. The twists and turns that one has to go through reading the novel is quite evident as the piece is very challenging to read, much more to understand. However this complexity seems to be the very vehicle upon which Smith presents to readers the idea of how complex writing or telling history is. In this novel, Smith puts herself and the reader in the shoes of a historian, who is faced with the dilemma of gathering a large collection of stories and accounts of things in the past to present to the public in a simple and straightforward manner. By making the narrative intricate, Smith takes the reader along for a dizzying journey that most serious historians take. Smith cleverly uses different voices and points of view in the stories that the main character, Jennifer Bingham, had to hear.