The primary source: Nothing But the Truth: A Documentary Novel is both a documentary and modified epistolary style novel with diary entries, personal letters, school memos and transcripts of dialogue. This inpire me much when I write my RIP project later. I later choose to combine the documentary with the first person narrative.

Primary Source: Nothing But the Truth: A Documentary Novel

It’s both a documentary and modified epistolary style novel with diary entries, personal letters, school memos and transcripts of dialogue. It tells the story of an incident in a New Hampshire town called Harrison where a boy is suspended from school for humming the United States National Anthem as well as the effects of this story receiving national publicity. The main theme of the novel is the subjectivity of truth and that while individual statements may be true, taken separately they may not give an accurate picture of an event.

Philip Malloy is a middling student who pays no attention on his study and blames his teacher about her poor grades. He disrespects his teacher and lies to others when he is asked to suspend from school. His teacher, Margaret Narwin is a responsible and patient teacher who cares about her students.

The author remains invisible in this novel, but the diaries and letters use first-person narration. The audience is all the people who blindly criticize something they don’t know the truth.

Secondary source: Factual Fictions: Narrative Truth and the Contemporary American Documentary Novel

Documentary is typically used for telling stories of actual people and actual events. Writers always record the truth without their own comments. Documentary always use diaries, archives, letters, photos and other materials in the structure to prove the truth. However, the documentary just tell the truth——they don’t include authors’ personal ideas. The language of documentary is typically formal.