Are All Historians Storytellers?

Almost everybody learns history, and almost all books about history, especially history textbook, is written by historians, more or less. The stories in these books are not only objective, but subjective, which is more a creative enterprise or an objective pursuit? I concedes that the speaker on the basis that history is made by human, and we have not paranoia of past. However history cannot be changed by any person, whoever he or she is, an ordinary person or a historian.

History is made by human. Any history is subject to human nature. So historian can interpret history according to nature of human. Furthermore, any person, even historian cannot get paranoia of the past, so that they explain the things happening in the past according to the limited data. There is inevitable expression or argument which is not consistent with the real history. In short, it is true that historians are storytellers.

Human creates history, but history is a kind of fact which cannot be changed by any person. To be a true historian, people must interpret not only evidence according to limited fact, but also human nature and situations in that time. When different historians state different claims on these evidence, we must pay enough attention to the situation in that time, seeing whether the interpretations were suitable for the time when things happened.

Moreover, if someone studies history only to be a storyteller, then he or she is not a real historian, although they would be called as a novelist. As a real historian he or she must be objective to any evidence, their responsibility is to find more exact evidence to support his or her explanation about the fact happing in the past.

In other words, one who interprets evidence not according to fact is not a real historian. If only as a storyteller, everybody can be. That is a joke, we do not need historians. In sum, the evidence need to be interpreted without arbitrary words. Any claim about history must evidence, be reasonable, be consistent with the nature of human.

(An exercise essay for GRE Analytic Writing, written in 2007)

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