What is an essay?

The essay can do everything that a poem can do, and everything a short story can do – everything but fake it. -AnnieDillard
Annie Dillard makes a great point about an essay having truth to it. She says that an essay can do anything that a poem or short story can do, it just can’t fake it. The essay should always have a little piece of truth to it because it adds the real life that everyone can relate to and makes learning more applicable. She goes on to say the truth always makes something more exciting to the reader. Short stories can excite the imagination of a reader through using fiction, but it will never come close to relating to an actual event or person that a writer would write about in an essay. Poems are the same way in relation to truth and condense all the information leaving the reader to infer what is meant by a few simple words. The essay, on the other hand, can expand from those simple words to create the feeling the writer is trying to get across. Dillard, also, talks about how there is little in the world that is not truth leaving the writer with much to work with, as well as, there is little that the reader will not believe either with the proper factual documentation. Therefore, the truth as a part of the essay does not limit it from the infinite bounds that may come with writing fictitious short stories, but adds the element of life that all people share. As long as people are living, the essayist will be able to give the reader something that grabs their attention and fascinates them with parts of their life that they may have never known about without that essay. And so, the truth of an essay is what sets it apart from all other kinds of fiction and without it, it should not be considered an essay.