The Problem of Understanding and Its Possible Solutions in "Our Time" by John Edgar Wideman and "Indians" by Jane Tompkins.

Both Jane Tompkins and John Edgar Wideman devote some of their paper to pointing out the difficulties they face when writing their essays, "Indians" and "Our Time" respectively. The two authors are trying to reach and give an account of the actual situation and circumstances of the subject of their writing, but in the process of creating their essays realize that this is something they would hardly achieve. "Our time" was created to tell the …

…two essays that a "creative" writer is sometimes bound to oscillate between preserving the veracity and adding his own touch to the story in an subconscious attempt to make it better (in his own terms), and the scholar, who seeks knowledge and truths and aims at the accurate presentation and manipulation of the facts, may be faced with sources of evidence, which taken separately seem truthful, but when compared appear to be one-sided and misleading.