Bias Exists In Every Story: Émilie Carles’ Autobiography Is No Exception

Addressing the question of whether an autobiography is always fiction “to the extent that it necessarily selects and arranges lived reality, bringing a personal viewpoint to bear, even if it makes every effort to avoid distortion and invention,” I find it indisputable that every story told from memory is one that is colored by a person’s biases and attitudes toward this story. Every time a person recalls a certain memory, they are reforming the image in their brain, and most likely, distorting this image from its true reality. The more times someone recalls a memory from their brain, the farther it is from the reality of the original event. Not to mention, the passing of time also distorts a brain's capacity to remember exactly what happened in a memory. The excerpt of Émilie Carles’ autobiography was abound with minute details about rural peasantry life, from the hard labor her family did to the tragedies that marked the family and surrounding community’s lives. While I am certain that much of what Carles writes is true to the essence of her life's experiences, I would be surprised if there was not a single story that contained gaps in Carles’ mind, but was filled in with blind trajectory during the writing process. For instance, Carles’ depiction of wartime and the loss of her sister, Catherine, is a memory drowned in deep sorrow and bitterness towards the unjustness of life. High emotions reinforce long-term memory, however, this doesn’t guarantee a degree of accuracy in this memory. To say that Carles’ emotions did not color her recalling of memories during her sister’s death would be highly inaccurate. As far as whether distorted memories weaken the credibility of an autobiography, I would argue that warped recollections give even greater insight into the mind of the author and how his or her personalities are affected by human emotions. Greater exaggeration or more sensationalist tales offer a stronger impact on the readers of autobiographies, an impact that is perhaps needed in order for the reader to really take to heart what the author is attempting to convey. The level of distortion that an autobiography may hold, compared to what actually happened in reality, could be seen as a reflection of how the author views him or herself in the context of the triumphs and struggles he or she has survived. And in the end, no matter if a story is an autobiography or an academic piece on the history of an event, human bias is present in all works and never will the happenings of our world be recorded with 100% accuracy that is true to reality.